Danny Melnick, tour producer of the festival, said the Newport Jazz Festival is a nationally recognized concert that has already performed in major cities across the country this year.
The festival, which only travels on milestone anniversaries, is celebrating 60 years since its creation in 1954.
“The cool thing about the jazz festival is that it’s still alive,” Melnick said. “It’s not like it just happened 60 years ago once — it keeps happening.”
The festival usually takes place in Rhode Island each year.
This year, the Newport Jazz Festival kicked off in Newport, R.I., before traveling across the country.
The band has already hit cities such as New York, Philadelphia, Los Angeles and Chicago.
East Lansing will soon join that roster.
Although the celebration of jazz has remained constant through the years, each year’s festival brings in new musicians.
This year’s Newport Jazz Festival will feature a seven-piece band that includes a saxophonist, vocalist, trumpeter, guitarist, pianist, drummer and bassist.
The group will be playing a mix of Brazilian, New Orleans and Latin style jazz.
Even though the band only gathered in January to start practicing, drummer Clarence Penn said the performances have gone smoothly so far.
“Everyone has a lot of experience, so that makes it easy working with this group,” Penn said. “The hard part is trying to cover 60 years of a festival with only 90 minutes.”
Penn, a Detroit native, said he grew up listening to records of the live performances at the Newport Jazz Festival.
When Melnick asked him to join the band for the festival this year, he jumped at the opportunity.
“It’s really exciting for me,” he said. “I’ve been familiar with the festival since the beginning of my jazz career, so its really nice to represent a festival that you grew up hearing about.”
Penn said when he began his career as a jazz musician, Michigan was not known for being a jazz state.
“I hear (there’s) definitely more awareness in the state, so it’s really exciting to be back now,” Penn said. “It’s always nice to come back and play at home.”
The festival will cater to a wide variety of people, Melnick said. Aside from jazz, the band will play soul, funk and blues songs.
“We try really hard to book different styles of music that all are related somehow to jazz,” Melnick said. “You may not get any major pop or rock or heavy metal or country, but you will get those other styles of music that in one way or another are connected to jazz.”
The performance will begin at 7:30 p.m. in Wharton Center. Tickets cost $15 for MSU students and can be purchased on the Wharton Center website.
