Dayton Jazz Festival moves down the street to RiverScape
For decades, the City of Dayton’s summer music festivals were held at Dave Hall Plaza, at the corner of Fourth and Jefferson streets. Not this year. When the series begins a new season with the Dayton Jazz Festival on Sunday, June 11, the action will shift to the performance pavilion at RiverScape MetroPark.
“They’re getting ready to break ground for the new Levitt Pavilion at Dave Hall Plaza so we had to move,” talent buyer Marty Romie said. “Right now, we don’t know if we’re moving back over to Dave Hall Plaza when it’s finished. RiverScape doesn’t have the same green area but we’ll be doing things the same way there. The vendor trucks will be on the street. We’ll have two alternating stages so we’ll have the same number of acts we have every year.”
Dayton Jazz Festival, known as Women in Jazz through 2014, features performances by Three Piece, Cruisin’ and On a Limb. The headliner is Tucki Bailey, who returned to Yellow Springs in February after living in California for 17 years.
“I spent a lot of time looking for a regional or national headliner,” Romie said. “I worked with two different agencies but they wanted to sell me stuff that wouldn’t work with our budget. Our headliner last year was smooth jazz so I didn’t want anything similar to that this year. I was lucky to get Tucki and she’s putting together a nice-piece band for the festival.”
The core of Bailey’s band is the rhythm section of Tony Whack (bass) and Francis White (drums).
“I’m just thrilled to play with Francis and Tony again because we haven’t played together in six or seven years,” Bailey said. “I’m excited to play the festival again, too. I played it 19 years in a row starting in 1984 but it’s been a few years since I’ve been there.”
The festival series continues at RiverScape with the Dayton Blues Festival on Sunday, July 16, followed by the Dayton Reggae Festival on Sunday, Sept. 3.
For the last two years, the summer series also featured the Dayton Rock Festival. That event won’t happen this year — not due to lack of interest but because there wasn’t an available date in RiverScape’s schedule.
“We were planning to have the Dayton Rock Festival and, in my mind, we really needed to have it,” Romie said. “We’ve only done it for two years so we’re still trying to establish it. The city wants to give it more time but this interruption isn’t good. We were just getting it started.”