Jazz lovers around the globe are celebrating April as Jazz Appreciation Month. Established in 2001 by the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History, Jazz Appreciation Month will culminate on April 30 (International Jazz Day) with an All-Star Global Jazz Concert in Abu Dhabi, UAE, featuring Herbie Hancock, Dee Dee Bridgewater (raised in Flint), John McLaughlin, Marcus Miller, native Detroiter Dianne Reeves, and more.
Here in the Motor City, the Detroit Jazz Festival Foundation is currently preparing for its 46th annual Detroit Jazz Festival, billed as the world’s largest free jazz extravaganza. The iconic four-day Festival will again be held over the Labor Day Weekend in downtown Detroit. The Festival, which attracts jazz lovers from around the world, has helped cement Detroit’s position as one of the great jazz incubators and capitals on the planet.
On Tuesday, April 15, the Detroit Jazz Festival Foundation released its full line-up of jazz artists at a preview event. The list of artists can be found on the Festival’s website: https://www.detroitjazzfest.org.
Earlier, the Detroit Jazz Festival Foundation named pianist, composer, and arranger Jason Moran as its 2025 Artist-in-Residence. Moran has released 18 solo recordings on Blue Note Records and Yes Records. In 2022, he was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and two years ago, Moran was honored with the 2023 German Jazz Prize for Pianist of the Year. Keeping his fingers on the pulse of Black history and activism, Moran has worked with film director Ava DuVernay on two films: Selma and 13th. Moran has also served as Artistic Director for Jazz at the Kennedy Center for Performing Arts.
“Jason Moran is a trailblazer in the use of diverse multimedia and theatrical installations to present jazz to audiences in a way that has never been done before,” said Chris Collins, President and Artistic Director of the Detroit Jazz Festival Foundation. “We look forward to his singular craftsmanship and his creative and evolutionary artistry to lead this year’s festival.”
“I’m shocked at being named Artist-in-Residence for the 2025 Detroit Jazz Festival,” said Moran, who was born and raised in Houston. “I’ve always been aware of who the Artists-in-Residence were in previous years (in Detroit) when visiting the festival. It always seems like an exciting prospect to share a number of sets with the Detroit listening public. So to be doing it this year, yeah, it’s just like a shock to me.”
Moran, who has recorded or performed with such jazz legends as Charles Lloyd, Cassandra Wilson, and the late Sam Rivers, will lead multiple diverse performances during the Labor Day weekend festival. In addition, Moran will support the Detroit Jazz Festival Foundation’s educational initiatives for students and community engagement activities across Detroit and the region throughout the year.
Moran gave a clue as to what some of his musical plans will include for the upcoming festival.
“I’m thinking that I have to figure out a way to represent Detroit’s techno music,” Moran said. “Techno has long been a thing I’ve listened to and practiced with sometimes at home. So why not, when in Detroit, really represent it? In an industrial city like Detroit, it will be the drum machine meeting piano…and what will happen when those two meet in their simplest forms.”
While techno has roots in Detroit dating back to the 1980s, no genre of music has deeper stems in the Motor City than jazz, which can be traced to at least 1920. With 105 years of jazz – and counting – it’s only right for Detroiters during Jazz Appreciation Month to marvel at the high status the city has reached as an incubator for jazz and recognize the hundreds of musicians who were either born and raised in Detroit or moved to the Motor City to be part of its robust jazz scene from the early 1900s through the 1960s.
If a tall wall could be built to honor the legendary jazz artists who have called Detroit home, it would include images of the McKinney Cotton Pickers, Yusef Lateef (saxophonist, flutist), Milt Jackson (vibraphonist), Dorothy Ashby (harpist), Alice Coltrane (pianist), Terry Pollard (pianist, vibraphonist), Curtis Fuller (trombonist), Barry Harris (pianist), Kenny Burrell (guitarist), Donald Byrd (trumpeter), Joe Henderson (saxophonist), the Jones Brothers (Hank piano, Thad trumpet, Elvin drums), Tommy Flanagan (pianist), Sir Roland Hanna (pianist), Lucky Thompson (saxophonist), Sonny Stitt (saxophonist raised in Saginaw), Kenny Cox (pianist), and Howard McGhee (trumpeter).
Want more? Add Wendell Harrison (saxophonist), Roy Brooks (drummer), Teddy Harris Jr. (saxophonist, pianist), Gerald Wilson (trumpeter, bandleader), Louis Hayes (drummer), J.C. Heard (drummer), Benny Maupin (saxophonist). Earl Klugh (guitarist), Phil Ranelin (trombonist), Regina Carter (violinist), James Carter (saxophonist), Geri Allen (pianist), Duane Parham (saxophonist), and Karriem Riggins (drummer), and too many more to name.
And if jazz is not one’s cup of tea, consider the music of Motown Records, provided by jazz musicians playing on the label’s thousands of songs from the 1960s through the ‘80s. The jazz artists with Detroit roots, who recorded and/or performed behind Motown acts, included the label’s Funk Brothers such as James Jamerson (bass player), Benny Benjamin (drummer), Earl Van Dyke (pianist), Joe Hunter (pianist), Eddie Willis (guitarist) Robert White (guitarist), Joe Messina (guitarist) Thomas “Beans” Bowles (flutist, baritone saxophonist), Richard “Pistol” Allen (drummer), Jack Ashford (percussionist), Marcus Belgrave (trumpeter), and George Bohanon (trombonist). Jazz pianist, saxophonist, and native Detroiter Teddy Harris was The Supremes’ music director for almost two decades.
“Berry Gordy knew what he had in Detroit,” said Jack Ashford years ago. “Berry had jazz musicians who could read music, who could come up with quick arrangements, and who could deliver time after time after time.”
“Detroit is the mecca for jazz in the United States and the world,” said noted Detroit bass player Ralphe Armstrong, who has recorded and/or played with such jazz legends as Mahavishnu Orchestra, Herbie Hancock, Jean-Luc Ponty, Narada Michael Walden, and Earl Klugh. “If you look at the history of the jazz culture, Detroit has turned out more ‘prominent jazz musicians’ than any other city in the world. During Jazz Appreciation Month, people must know and understand while New Orleans is the birthplace of jazz, it has not turned out a third of the jazz musicians that Detroit has, and neither have other jazz cities like New York, St. Louis, Kansas City, Paris or Montreal.”
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