Thu 6/28-Sat 6/30
The internationally renowned Tri-C JazzFest returns Thursday through Saturday in and around Playhouse Square. Sure, the 39thannual affair includes quite a list of high-profile acts such as Common, Snarky Puppy, Cory Henry & the Funk Apostles and Dee Dee Bridgewater; however, the heart of the event is music education.
Specifically, we’re talking about the Tri-C JazzFest Academy, which provides an outlet for talented teenageNortheast Ohio musicians throughout the year. In conjunction with the JazzFest is the Academy’s annual Summer Camp, where this year roughly 80 musicians will be performing in various groups and incarnations all weekend long.
This includes the Tri-C JazzFest Academy performance Fri 6/29 @ 3:30pm at the outdoor stage located at Euclid Avenue and E. 14th Street, as well as throughout the weekend prior to headliner performances inside Playhouse Square.
Also, world-renowned jazz trumpeter and 2001 Solon High School graduate Dominick Farinacci will be leading the Spirit of the Groove Big Band, featuring Tri-C JazzFest Academy students, as it supports Terence Blanchard at 3:30pm Saturday in the Allen Theatre.
CoolCleveland talked to Farinacci about his own magical teenage Tri-C JazzFest experience, as well as the importance of the Tri-C JazzFest Academy.
CoolCleveland: Let’s start off talking about the Tri-C JazzFest Academy.
Dominick Farinacci: We have our Saturday programs where throughout the school year where we get together for four hours. That’s our main program. And then the Summer Camp is its own thing. That’s what I run. It’s a two-week intensive study, and it culminates in a performance at the JazzFest. One program within the academy is called Spirit of the Groove. That’s the band I lead. It’s a special advanced project where it’s peer mentorship. It has middle school, high school, college students and then veteran professionals from the area working side by side.
CC: This must be an amazing experience for you considering your history with the Tri-C JazzFest Academy.
DF: That’s right, I started studying at Tri-C when I was 13 years old. But when I was 17, I came through the Tri-C JazzFest Academy. It was really impactful because I had some great teachers who are also great performers like Ernie Krivda and Joe Hunter. It was a really special situation. Every Saturday we would come down and study with them for the day, and a lot of times they’d be doing gigs at night. So we’d go out check out the gigs and sometimes get to sit in. It was a perfect balance of in-school education and then on-the-bandstand education. That’s really what the Tri-C JazzFest Academy is about.
CC: Can you elaborate regarding the Tri-C JazzFest Academy mission?
DF: It’s about studying the foundation of the music, a lot of different styles within jazz music and showing how that applies to live performances. So the academy is performance based. Everything we do in the academy is to help to improve performance. That’s really what we’re all about.
CC: Tell us about your magical Tri-C JazzFest Academy moment that changed your life forever.
DF: When I was 17 playing at JazzFest, some of Wynton Marsalis’ band members did a clinic for us and they told him about me. Later he asked me to come backstage and play for him. I got a great lesson there, and then he came to our jam session. A few months later I got a call from Wynton’s office asking to come up to New York City to play at Lincoln Center on PBS. He featured three young trumpet players from around the country, myself, Brandon Lee and Trombone Shorty. That was a pretty awesome experience and that was really the beginning of my career.
CC: Not every Tri-C JazzFest Academy member has that type of experience. With that in mind, what do you hope your students take away from the academy?
DF: We really emphasized the importance of developing a strong musical foundation in this music, studying the history of the music and studying great artists like Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, Miles Davis and John Coltrane all the way up to today. Through studying their music, that’s how we gain the tools to play our own music and to get better and to understand this language and develop the jazz language. So it’s really important to focus on the foundation, because when you strengthen your foundation then you get to sound good. And we always have live performance opportunities. That’s really important. Sometimes you get lucky enough to be in the right place at the right time, but I think more than that it’s you have to be prepared musically to succeed in the live performance. Sometimes you catch the ear of one of the jazz greats. Sometimes not. If you look at the history of the music and how different musicians find their path, some musicians become well known early on and others later. So there’s no specific formula to it. The most the important thing is just to really focus on, again, foundational study.
CC: Finally, how is the Tri-C JazzFest viewed around the nation?
DF: Having played most of the major jazz festivals around the country, most recently Newport Jazz Festival, I always hear musicians talking about Cleveland and the JazzFest. If you look at the lineage of artists that have come through the JazzFest, it’s pretty much the history of jazz music, going back to Ella Fitzgerald and all of the greats who came decades ago and up to today with Common and José James, all of these artists. I think the type of artist that are presented at the festival reflect the importance of it on a national and international level. We’re getting so many artists that are really kind of the leaders in moving this music forward.
Cleveland, OH 44115