Get Jazzed in the Gardens

Jazz might not be the first type of music that pops into your head when you think of Miami, but our city actually has quite a bit of the difficult-to-define yet highly infectious sound in its colorful past. Big names such as Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holiday, and Nat King Cole used to grace the marquees of the Sir John Hotel and Lyric Theater back in the day, and now Jazz in the Gardens continues the tradition of bringing good music to the masses. Last year it was Nancy Wilson and Chaka Khan, and this year Erykah Badu, Maze featuring Frankie Beverly, Kenneth “Babyface” Edmonds, Kenny G., Common, and others will take the stage today and Sunday.

You and 249,999 of your closest friends will likely sway, boogie, and groove to the sounds of live music — something local jazz lovers will tell you is rare in these parts. Not that our fun-in-the-sun attitude isn’t conducive to a genre of music that is often so deep it infects your very bone marrow with its rhythms and melodies, it’s just that artists of this caliber are rarely in the same place at the same time.
Sat., March 28, 2009