Marcus Belgrave at Big Tony's First Annual Jazz Festival. Perfect!
Monmouth roadies had back stage passes...Make that: Monmouth Road was THE backstage to Big Tony's first annual Jazz Festival. What a treat, what a perfect venue! A whole weekend of top notch jazz performances by local and international musicians culminating with the headline act from non other than internationally renownd horn man, Marcus Belgrave. But wait...That's not all! Also sharing that stage was the sexy, soulful and powerful Joan Bow-Belgrave whos voice carried up tree-lined Monmouth with the sweet clarity and perfection that is her. Incredible!
How Did this Come to Be?
Would you believe with a phone call? Tony from name sake restaurant "Big Tony's" decided to take a shot at making a phone call to Marcus Belgrave's home. After a couple of rings a voice answered "Hello". Tony asked if Mr. Belgrave was available and the voice replied: "You got him" and that was that. Mr. Belgrave brought Tony's jazz festival out of the dream phase and gave Big Tony the horsepower needed to make it an annual event. After that it was Tony's turn to put wings on this thing. He quickly had posters made up, worked out the logistics with the city and with the neighbourhood (what another party?) and as the story goes...
The weekend's line-up looked like this:
Big Tony’s JazzFest Music Lineup
Friday, June 18
5:10 – 6:10 Acoustix Quartet
6:30 – 7:30 Black Orchid
7:50 – 8:50 Ian Smith & Friends
9:10 – 9:55 The Lucky Strike Trio
10 - 11 Soiree
Saturday, June 19
12:30 – 1:30 Walkerville High School Band
1:50 – 2:50 Black Orchid
3:10 – 4:10 Acoustix Quartet
4:30 – 5:30 Al Lukas Band
5:50 – 6:50 Clover Joy
7:10 – 8:10 Chimoca
8:30 – 9:10 Six Degrees
9:20 – 11 Marcus Belgrave
Sunday, June 20
12 – 1 Acoustix Quartet
1:20 – 2:20 Six Degrees
2:40 – 3:40 Soiree
4 – 5 Hula Dog
5:15 – 6 Max Marshall Trio
The show started early on Friday evening and went pretty as scheduled until about 10:30 P.M. when the show was stopped due to an ugly storm front moving in quickly from across the river. Heavy winds touched down, toppling the stage lighting truss sending the Mars Media crew scrambling to secure and waterproof the the gear. Saturdays weather was perfect. Sunny all day with continued clear sky into the evening. By ten P.M. Marcus Belgrave and company were on stage doing their sound check and from there went seamlessly into their set which lasted until midnight. The sound was perfect and the the crowd (estimated at about 600 strong) was in jazz heaven. Big Tony pulled it off. Hopefully Windsor and indeed Old Walkerville will see this Jazzy event return next year.
Chimoca
Six Degrees
Joan Bow-Belgrave along with Marcus Belgrave. What a treat!
Brought to Windsor by:
Posters, CDs, memorabelia still available at Big Tony's
1 comment:
Thanks for posting, Mayor. It was a very great weekend indeed! I only hope that Big Tony broke even. Dare I dream that he actually made a profit? The cost of hiring those top-notch bands must have been pretty high. I, for one, am considering dropping a small monetary donation off to Big Tony today. I had such an enjoyable weekend listening to all of that wonderful live music and I feel kind of guilty that I only visited the actual grounds a couple of times and only spent money on a bit of food and a couple of drinks. (You just can't beat live music.)
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