Rootabaga Jazz Festival

The 2017 Knox-Rootabaga Jazz Festival, April 6-8, features the Victor Garcia Organ Quintet, Gretchen Parlato Quartet, the Knox Alumni Big Band, Faculty and Friends Combo, and the Knox Jazz Ensemble.

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April 4, 2017

Rootabaga Jazz School Tour Concert
Knoxville High School 
7:00 p.m.
Free

On April 4 and 5th, the ensemble will be touring areas schools performing educational convocations for students at Nielsen Elementary, Silas Willard, Steele Elementary, Gale Elementary, King Elementary, Costa Catholic Academy, and Knoxville High School. This public concert is presented in connection with the educational tour, and celebrates the unique collaboration between regional jazz artists and a nationally renowed performer with a free community performance.

April 6, 2017

Faculty and Friends Combo
Fat Fish Pub (158 North Broad Street)
8:00 p.m. - Midnight
Admission: $5

The Faculty and Friends performance features Knox's accomplished jazz faculty and local jazz musicians from the vibrant live music community of central Illinois.

April 7, 2017

Knox Alumni Big Band
8:00 p.m. - 9:00 p.m.
Fat Fish Pub, 158 N. Broad St., Galesburg

Victor Garcia Organ Quintet
Fat Fish Pub, 158 N. Broad St., Galesburg
9:30-midnight • $10

Trumpeter Victor Garcia is one of Chicago's most versatile musicians, equally at home in pure jazz improvisation or Latin music. As a sideman, he has played with a multitude of artists from a wide variety of genres, such as Aretha Franklin, Arturo Sandoval, Spoon, Sones de Mexico, Angel Melendez & the 911 Mambo Orchestra, Monty Alexander, Victor Manuelle, Nicholas Payton, La India, the Temptations, Steve Turre, BeBe Winans, Tito Puente, Jr., Paquito d'Rivera, Randy Brecker, and many others. He is co-leader of the Chicago Afro-Latin Jazz Ensemble (CALJE).

His organ quintet explores the blusier side of jazz with an emphasis on the soulful Hammond B3 organ.

April 8, 2017

Rootabaga Kids: The Victor Garcia Organ Quintet
April 8, 2017
Galesburg Public Library
10:30am-11:30am
Free and open to the public

Gretchen Parlato Quartet
Orpheum Theatre, 57 S. Kellogg St., Galesburg 
5:00 p.m.
Free floor & balcony seats • $20 reserved mezzanine

The award winning Knox Jazz Ensemble will open the evening, followed by the Gretchen Parlato Quartet.

In the 10years since her arrival in New York City, Gretchen Parlato has emerged as one of the most inventive and mesmerizing vocalists of her generation. In an artful communion of space, texture and a genre-bending repertoire, she has introduced a musical sea-change, making the power of subtlety front and center in jazz.

Parlato´s new album and DVD set, Live in NYC, serves as both a gift of gratitude for those loyal fans and a window into her captivating concert performances. Style Weekly gives insight to her live performances, saying "in performance, jazz vocalist Gretchen Parlato is a revelation... her diaphanous voice expands into an instrument of impressive range, rhythmic sophistication and emotional power." The Jazz Breakfast even picks up on the differences between her records and live performance, commenting, "the New York-based Californian and her band are terrific on record, but in live performance they fill the music with even more energy, stretching it like some magic pliable plastic into new and exciting forms. The rhythmic and dynamic expertise of all four is extraordinary. They shift the accents around, they pause, and fall back in perfectly, they deepen the groove and then 'shallow' it gently again."

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