In late April I spent a week in New York, volunteering at the NY Hot Jazz Camp as I have done every year since its inception, and attending the one-day Gotham Jazz Festival at the Players Club, a historic mansion on Gramercy Park South (East 20th St.) on Sunday, the 28th.
The Camp’s 49 students from 5 countries and 15 states plus Washington, DC worked for five days with an all-star faculty: Evan Christopher on reeds, Jon-Erik Kellso, trumpet; Dion Tucker, trombone; Rob Garcia, drums; Jesse Gelber and Dalton Ridenhour, piano; Nikki Parrott, bass; Justin Poindexter, guitar and banjo; and Becky Kilgore, vocals. The campers were put into (roughly) 8-piece ensembles that performed three-tune sets at the Festival.
The ensembles adopted names like “Barrow’d Time,” (Camp is held at the Greenwich House Music School on Barrow Street), Stockholm Syndrome
(reflecting the fact that four students from Sweden attended camp), and “Ragtime Wrecking Crew.” The faculty also comprised a band that played after the student sets. The Camp founders and organizers Molly Ryan and Bria Skonberg joined the faculty band as well as one or two other bands later in the day and the jam that ended the day.
As with previous festivals, I was not able to attend every band’s or pianist’s set, but this
