Earshot Jazz Festival offers the best of jazz in Seattle and beyond

The Earshot Jazz Festival brings three full weeks of outstanding jazz concerts, panels, films and other programs to a city that really loves its jazz.

Garfield High School Jazz Band at Lincoln Center, photo by Frank Stewart

We have Earshot Jazz, a nonprofit arts organization which not only produces “Seattle’s most important annual jazz event (Down Beat),” but also “publishes a monthly news magazine, provides educational programs and special projects in jazz, and presents nearly 100 concerts annually…” We have the internationally known Garfield High School Jazz Band with a staggering list of honors, including a first place in the Essentially Ellington Competition in New York City this year. Then there’s the equally talented Roosevelt High School Jazz Band, which came in second at Essentially Ellington this year, but won last year. And that is just the kids.

This year’s Earshot Jazz Festival will feature those amazing kids, of course, as well as “more than 50 one-of-a-kind events in concert halls, clubs, and community centers all around the city.” The festival begins Friday, October 16 and runs through November 8th. Click here for the full schedule of events.

The Seattle Times, which calls the event “one of the nation’s most eclectic and protracted festivals of its kind,” has a great article highlighting many of the performers. There’s plenty of talent showing up in Seattle for this festival, both local and international. Though really, a lot of our local talent is internationally acclaimed.

Check out this page on the Earshot website for information about buying tickets to the different concerts. There are many different venues that will be hosting programs, including Benaroya Hall, The Chapel Performance Space in the Good Shepherd Center, the Seattle Art Museum, The Triple Door, Tula’s, Northwest Film Forum and Town Hall, among others, and they all have different ticketing requirements. You can also splurge on a discounted Gold Card that will gain you entrance into all of the events with preferred seating at most. This festival is worth it.

And when the festival is over, you can still keep up with what’s going on with jazz in Seattle with a terrific website, The Seattle Jazz Scene, which offers reviews, calendars, links to clubs, venues, media and blogs and fresh news about performers and much, much more.