Screenshot from the 2018 Silver Spring Jazz Festival flyer featuring Dianne Reeves.
The 15th annual Silver Spring Jazz Festival will be held on Veterans Plaza Saturday, Sept. 8, the county’s Recreation Department has announced.
This year’s headliner will be vocalist Dianne Reeves, a winner of the 2018 National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Masters award, the country’s highest honor for a jazz musician.
Reeves also won a Grammy in 2015 for Best Jazz Vocal Album with “Beautiful Life,” which included covers of Bob Marley’s “Waiting in Vain,” Fleetwood Mac’s “Dreams,” Marvin Gaye’s “I Want You” and Ani DiFranco’s “32 Flavors.”
Reeves joins previous festival headliners such as Wynton Marsalis, Arturo Sandoval, Aaron Neville and the Preservation Hall Jazz Band.
The festival will open at 3:15 p.m. with a performance by the Jazz Academy of Music. Other performers will be:
- Charles Woods Quintet at 4:30 .m.
- Akua Allrich at 5:45 p.m., and
- Blair High School graduate Marcus Johnson at 7 p.m.
Reeves is scheduled to take the stage at 8:30 p.m. The free festival, which typically attracts more than 15,000 attendees, will end at 10 p.m.