|
Woody Allen to Play at Rochester Jazz Fest
03/08/2006 4:16 PM, AP
Woody Allen wants to help the birthplace of jazz recover its old rhythm.
The 70-year-old filmmaker and clarinet player will open the fifth annual Rochester International Jazz Festival in June with a benefit concert for New Orleans' dislocated jazz community, festival producer John Nugent said Wednesday.
"I've offered Woody Allen a performance slot four years in a row but it's getting to the right people when you're dealing with Hollywood," Nugent said. "We've finally found the right person and we're just ecstatic that he's agreed to do it.
"There's a lot of passion in his heart for jazz music and for New Orleans, so I guess serendipity has a lot to do with it — and a little bit of luck."
Allen and his New Orleans Jazz Band will launch the nine-day festival at the Eastman Theater on June 9. While he regularly plays at the swanky Cafe Carlyle in New York, Allen rarely performs in large venues or outside Manhattan.
The ruin wrought by Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans changed that somewhat. Weeks after the catastrophe, his band joined a star-studded cast of performers at a Sept. 24 benefit in Manhattan for Katrina relief efforts.
The festival in Rochester, the birthplace of motion-picture film, will feature more than 100 performances ranging from formal concerts to free street gigs. "We've got quite a few New Orleans bands coming this year," said Nugent, who will release his official lineup on April 6.
Tickets for Allen's concert go on sale Friday, with prices ranging from $50 to $95. The bulk of the proceeds will be donated to the nonprofit New Orleans Musicians Hurricane Relief Fund.
"As much money as can go toward that cause is going to help musicians who have been displaced and there are hundreds of them that have lost their homes in the New Orleans area," said Nugent, a jazz saxophonist who toured with the Woody Herman Orchestra in the late 1980s.
___
On the Net:
http://www.rochesterjazz.com
|
