Solstice Jazz Opens Friday

(EAST LANSING, MI) – The 16th Annual Summer Solstice Jazz Festival will take place this Friday, June 22 and Saturday, June 23 from 4:30-10:30 p.m. in downtown East Lansing’s Lot 1 (230 Albert Ave). It’s FREE!
The SSJF will bring a high-calibre line-up of local and national jazz performers to downtown during a two-day jazz-infused weekend.

The 2012 line-up includes the Detroit Tenors, the Community Music School Jazz Orchestra, Wycliffe Gordon and Niki Haris, Ritmo, the Neil Gordon Trio, Modern Jazz Messengers, Alexis Cole (pictured above), the East Lansing Summer Solstice Jazz Orchestra, LCC Faculty Group, the Peter Nelson Quintet, the Anthony Stanco Quartet and the Diego Rivera Quartet.

The festival is produced by the City of East Lansing, Wharton Center for Performing Arts and the MSU College of Music. The SSJF is a non-profit event that relies on the generosity of sponsors to bring FREE-to-the-community performances to more than 10,000 community members each year.

Wycliffe Gordon and Niki Haris will headline the Friday stage and Alexis Cole will headline the Saturday stage. Gordon has been named the "Trombonist of the Year" by the Jazz Journalists Association six times over the past 11 years. He tours the world performing hard-swinging, straight-ahead jazz and his music garners great acclaim from audiences and critics alike.

Haris, daughter of Grammy-nominated jazz pianist Gene Haris, works with a multitude of recording artists, including Wilton Felder of the Jazz Crusaders, the Righteous Brothers, Mick Jagger and Madonna; she also worked with the late Ray Charles and Whitney Houston. Her singing career touches many musical genres, including jazz, pop, gospel, disco and more.

Cole is called "one of the great voices of today" and has been compared to classic jazz singers such as Sarah Vaughan and Anita O’Day. She is the recipient of a Swing Journal Gold Disk Award and has won the NY Jazzmobile and Montreux Jazz Festival vocal competitions.

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