The 18th annual Silver Spring Jazz Festival, which will take place at Veterans Plaza in downtown Silver Spring on Saturday, Sept. 9, will be headlined by three-time Grammy Award-winning vocalist Dee Dee Bridgewater.
The Silver Spring Jazz Festival will take place from 3-10 p.m. on September 9, with Bridgewater taking the main stage at 8:30 p.m., according to a county press release.
The event is free of charge, with restaurants in the surrounding area of Veterans Plaza offering a variety of cuisines. For seating, attendees are encouraged to bring a blanket or low-back lawn chairs. The Silver Spring Metro Station is within walking distance of the festival site, which is located at the corner of Ellsworth Drive and Fenton Street, adjacent to the Silver Spring Civic Building.
In addition to the jazz festival, there will be a beer garden featuring brews from several Silver Spring Brewery & Arts District breweries. As part of the beer garden, there will be food service, comfortable seating, arts, and entertainment, as well as craft beer brewed in the area.
Bridgewater is a Tony Award-winning singer and recipient of the National Endowment for the Arts’ Jazz Master’s Award. She has put her unique spin on jazz standards as well as reimagined jazz classics over the course of a four-decade career. Her career has spanned several musical genres, and she began her professional career with the legendary Thad Jones/Mel Lewis Big Band. Her performances include collaborations with jazz greats such as Max Roach, Sonny Rollins, Dexter Gordon, and Dizzy Gillespie.
A parallel career in musical theater was also pursued by Bridgewater, who was awarded a Tony Award for her performance as “Glinda” in The Wiz in 1975. As part of the off-Broadway production of Lady Day, she recently played the role of Billie Holiday.
Photo: “DeeDeeBridgewater.RJF21.RosslynVA.10September2011” by Elvert Barnes is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.