Music Lovers Invited to Inaugural Rubber City Jazz & Blues Festival

 Chris Potter

Fri 8/26-Sat 8/27

For years trombonist Chris Anderson has been a part of the Northeast Ohio music scene. After graduating from both Baldwin Wallace University and the University of Akron, the Detroit native has performed with the Cleveland Jazz Orchestra and Jazz Heritage Orchestra.

Now as the executive director of nonprofit community outreach organization Open Tone Music, Anderson is moving ahead with the creation of the inaugural Rubber City Jazz & Blues Festival, which takes place 8/26-27 at different downtown Akron venues such as the Akron Art Museum, Blu Jazz+ and Musica.

Among the 15 local artists scheduled to perform are DTC Organ Trio featuring Chris Potter (pictured), Josh Rzepka & Mike Forfia, Kenny Davis Quintet, Sammy DeLeon with dancers, Kristine Jackson, Willie Ross and Austin Walkin’ Cane.

CoolCleveland talked to Anderson about the debut of the Rubber City Jazz & Blues Festival.

What’s the origin of the Rubber City Jazz & Blues Festival?

Jazz pianist Theron Brown was actually thinking about this last fall. He approached me about having the festival. One of the things that we realized was that every single festival in Cleveland, Detroit and Pittsburgh all had these strong education components to them. Also, that just kind of fit into the mission of Open Tone Music. I grew up musically in the Cleveland area and I’ve had a lot of artists who have given a lot of time and effort and created a lot of opportunity for me. The idea is for me to just create the same thing for somebody else. So we have mostly local artists coming in. It’s really focusing in on promoting Akron artists and promoting education. Basically using education as a tool to be able to teach kids good work ethic, self-esteem and respect for each other.

What sort of educational outreach programs do you have in mind?

The educational component of it includes workshops and ongoing classes at Boys & Girls Club of the Western Reserve and Compass Christian Church. We’re also trying to coordinate classes with Akron public schools. That’s going to go on all year.

Can you tell us about Open Tone Music?

We started in 2010. We were doing some work in the suburbs and at the same time we noticed in the urban areas some of these students were losing opportunities. Arts programs were diminishing mostly due to funding. So we made an intentional effort to concentrate our resources, our skills into the inner cities. We started volunteering literally six days a week at the Boys & Girls Club of Cleveland just seeing what we could accomplish and what we could get these kids to do. Here we are six years later and we’re now branching into the Akron area under our new initiative, the Rubber City Jazz & Blues Festival. It’s pretty exciting stuff.

Looking ahead, what are the plans for the Rubber City Jazz & Blues Festival?

The opportunity we have is unique just because first of all it’s new and we really want to focus. We really have a lot of positive impact and want to keep the local artists and local restaurants and other local venues engaged. We want to keep building off of that. This year it’s a day-and-a-half festival. We want to eventually expand it to a five-day festival. We want to include Lock 3 and Lock 4, and Akron Civic. But this year we wanted to start a little smaller. We want to be able to build off the success of this year.

[Written by John Benson]

Akron, OH 44308

Akron, OH 44308

Akron, OH 44308

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