Monterey Jazz Festival Brings Young Stars to ͷ Riley Center on March 29
MERIDIAN, Miss. – A “once in a generation” singer headlines a stage full of young talent as the Monterey Jazz Festival on Tour 2019 visits the ͷ Riley Center on Friday, March 29, at 7:30 p.m.
Cécile McLorin Salvant earned that accolade from legendary jazz trumpeter Wynton Marsalis. New Yorker magazine critic Fred Kaplan, reviewing her debut at New York’s Village Vanguard nightclub, raved: “She sang with perfect intonation, elastic rhythm, an operatic range from thick lows to silky highs. She had emotional range, too, inhabiting different personas in the course of a song, sometimes even a phrase.”
The tour celebrates the 60th anniversary of the revered California jazz festival with an all-star band that, says festival Artistic Director Tim Jackson, represents the future of jazz. Here are the other up-and-coming players coming to the Riley Center:
—Bria Skonberg, a Canadian singer and trumpeter described by the Wall Street Journal as one of the “most versatile and imposing musicians of her generation”
—Melissa Aldana, a tenor saxophonist and native of Chile who was the first female instrumentalist and first South American to win the Thelonious Monk International Competition
—Christian Sands, a pianist and five-time Grammy Award nominee from New Haven, Connecticut, who is the tour music director
—Jamison Ross, a drummer and vocalist from Jacksonville, Florida, who is also a Grammy nominee and a winner of the Thelonious Monk Competition
—Yasushi Nakamura, a bassist from Japan by way of Seattle who earned a bachelor’s degree from Berklee College of Music and an artist diploma from the Juilliard School
Together, they will perform both jazz standards and new music that they have written.
Tickets are $43 and $37 at the ͷ Riley Center Box Office, which is open from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday. Tickets can be purchased online at or by phone at 601-696-2200.