Download File (36KB)
- A 40-year tradition at the University of Idaho, the Lionel Hampton International Jazz Festival brings jazz masters together with elementary, junior high, high school and college students to share and celebrate music.
- This year, the four-day festival includes adjudicated performances from more than 14,000 students from more than 300 schools. Guest artists will lead workshops for students during the day and perform in nightly concerts for the students, teachers, parents and the local community. Students judged as exceptional during the adjudicated performances are given the opportunity to perform following the evening concerts.
- Guest artists for the 2008, Lionel Hampton International Jazz Festival include: Dr. John, Roy Hargrove, Hank Jones, Jon Hendricks, Aaron Weinstein, Sarah Gazarek and many others.
- Festival artistic director John Clayton is a six-time Grammy-nominated bassist, composer, arranger and conductor. Clayton has been affiliated with the festival for the past 10 years.
- The Jazz Festival began in 1967, under the direction of University of Idaho Music Professor David Seiler as a way to increase jazz education in the Northwest. Since then, organizers at the University of Idaho have worked to strengthen the learning experience between students and jazz artists. After attending the festival in 1997, guitarist Herb Ellis said the event was the only one of its kind where world renowned jazz artists had the chance to sit down with students and directly share their experience and knowledge.
- Jazz greats who have performed at the festival include Lionel Hampton, Ella Fitzgerald, Gerry Mulligan, Dizzy Gillespie, Dianne reeves, Stan Getz, Carmen McRae, Diana Krall, Wynton Marsalis and Sarah Vaughan.
- In 1985, Hampton began his long-term association with the festival and it took on his name, the first and only jazz festival named for an African American jazz musician. In 1987, the School of Music at the University was renamed the Lionel Hampton School of Music.
- The Jazz Festival has featured nearly 80 musicians from 30 countries, including China, the Czech Republic, Portugal and Peru, as well as students from Canada, Japan, Russia and Kyrgyzstan. In 2006, the festival became known as the Lionel Hampton International Jazz Festival to reflect this international diversity.
|
