| |
2008 Recordings
- Festival recordings are out and available from Jazz Fest Live. (There's a link below.)
- Late night recordings are out and available from Digital Soundboard. (There's a link below.)
What Is It?
Jazz Fest -- the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival -- takes place each year over two weekends in late April and early May. Ten stages of music running continuously from around 11AM until 6PM. All kinds of music, all kinds of food, a wonderful crowd. It's an incredible
bargain
and a great way to immerse yourself in music and culture.
Some Links
Jazz Fest: The official site. Look for the "Cubes" that show the stage-by-stage schedule for each day -- they're available about a month in advance.
Jazz Fest
Grids: With all the great artists in town, the clubs and concert halls are jumping every night. The Jazz Fest Grids show who's where when. The site also has some other good Jazz Fest-related links.
Jazz Fest Live: Many of the performances are recorded and available for purchase here.
Digital Soundboard: This site has some high-quality live recordings of performances in clubs at night during Jazz Fest. It also has recordings from Michael Arnone's Crawfish Fest in Augusta, NJ.
French Quarter Festival: A free festival in the French Quarter about two weeks before Jazz Fest. Some of the performances are broadcast on WWOZ.
Ponderosa Stomp: An American roots music festival dedicated to recognizing the architects of rock-n-roll, blues, jazz, country, swamp pop, reggae and soul. The Stomp traditionally takes place in New Orleans between the two weekends of Jazz Fest.
|
|
The Jazz Fest Dilemma
With so many stages of music how do you see everything you want to see? Answer: You don't. There's a t-shirt that says it best:
"Judge your Jazz Fest not by the greatness of what you see, but by the greatness of what you have to skip in order to see it."
The
shirt is available from Swagland, along with lots of Jazz Fest info and links.
The Food
The food at the Jazz Fest site is amazing -- there are no corndogs or funnel cakes. Personal favorite: Pheasant, quail and andouille gumbo from Prejean's. (They ship anywhere.)
And a personal favorite in the restaurant category: Louisiana Bistro in the French Quarter.
Accommodations
The Jazz Fest site has links to lots of hotels. An alternative is to look for smaller hotels, B&B's, condos or apartments. These can be booked up months in advance, so if you know you're going to go, it's never too early to start looking. Try Craig's list, VRBO, Google and so on.
|
|
