Savannah Music Festival begins

Savannah, Georgia, is a port city, a place where old south meets new, where world cultures converge and intertwine. The Savannah Music Festival both celebrates the world of Savannah and its connections to places and music around the world, with more than one hundred concerts across the city. The events begin on 18 March and continue through 3 April. If you’re not able to make it in person, the festival’s web site offers access to some events through web radio broadcast.

Artists you’ve met before along the music road will be there. along with many others. Mark O’Connor, whose eclectic background in country, classical, and jazz makes him a perfect fit of the festival’s focus, will bring his Hot Swing Trio to town. Joe Craven will teach in the education program that open doors to the arts to hundreds of area schoolchildren. Kathy Mattea will offer her folk inspired country and the flavor of her West Virginia heritage, on a double bill with another outstanding singer who grew up in the southern mountains, Patty Loveless. Lang Lang, who has been engaging classical audiences around the world, will appear in a program with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra. There will be a concert of ‘Forbidden Music’ featuring pre holocaust compositions, staged in Temple Mickve Israel, Georgia’s oldest temple, with players including festival associate artistic director Daniel Hope, Jeffrey Kahane, and others. Ruthie Foster will bring her Texas based brand of blues, funk, and soul to town, in a bill with Savannah blues singer Kristina Train. Marcus Roberts, also an associate artistic director of the festival, will helm jazz programs featuring concert on the Riverfront and presentations from some of the country’s finest jazz educators, and will appear himself in a piano showdown with Henry Butler and others. There will be a double bill with Bill Frisell and Bassekou Kouyate, while up and comers Canadian Sierra Noble and Texan Sarah Jarosz hold up the bluegrass side of things, along with veteran Del McCoury.

There’s quite a bit more: school programs, a competition with singers choosing classic American songs, a New orleans Blues party, a gospel workshop, one off events and continuing collaborations. There’s more about it all at the festival’s web site.

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