Visit Michigan During Detroit Jazz Festival

Chris Collins will never forget the first Detroit Jazz Festival he attended in 1980. He was a student at Lakeview High School in nearby St. Clair Shores, and his high school band performed. Already a jazz fan, he marveled at the accessibility the festival offered — with free admission!

“After we played, it became obvious to me that I could walk from stage to stage and see my heroes,” he says. “It was an amazing gift.”

And it’s a gift he tries to remain mindful of, as the president and artistic director for the festival, held annually over Labor Day weekend and still free and open to the public.

“We want to not only to maintain a premier jazz festival, but to provide our activities for free, which is one of the barriers that has to be broken down to allow everyone to experience the truly great American art form,” says Collins, also the director of jazz studies at Wayne State University. “Admission — even $10 a day — could eliminate the people who are drivers and consumers and even propagators of the art form.”

The festival, which includes education efforts, panel discussions, and of course dozens of performances, remains one of the biggest in the country and, over the years, has attracted top performers, like the Tower of Power, Wynton Marsalis and Dave Brubeck. (Details on this year’s lineup will be released this spring.)

But the festival is accessible to aspiring musicians, as well. Collins says it’s one of the few remaining jazz festivals that offers open submissions for potential performers, noting that as many as 1,600 performers will audition.

Detroit has always been an important city in jazz history — a combination of many factors, including a large performing and recording scene, vibrant gospel music and a significant Black population — but Collins notes that the scene is growing as the city itself stabilizes and readjusts.

“Detroit continues to create a vast array of creative artists that go on to alter the trajectory of the arts,” Collins says. “Artists are staying here — and relocating here. The day-to-day creativity of artists and the ability to perform have just blossomed.” detroitjazzfest.org

More Music

The show never stops in Detroit. Here are three places to get your fix year-round.

Cliff Bell’s
The OG jazz club in Detroit, Cliff Bell’s opened in 1935, two years after Prohibition ended. (Its owner and namesake had run several “blind pigs” — as speakeasies were called in Detroit — during Prohibition). The new club had air conditioning, mahogany paneling, brass rails, bar stools (allegedly the first place to use them) and live music. That tradition continues to this day, with regular jazz performances five nights a week. cliffbells.com

Bert’s
Located in the Eastern Market, a one-stop shop for food, merchandise and bars and restaurants, Bert’s Entertainment Complex includes a barbecue restaurant (with dishes named for famous musicians), memorabilia dedicated to Detroit’s Black history and a variety of live music, including the blues, jazz and its famed Saturday morning karaoke.
bertsentertainmentcomplex.squarespace.com

Aretha’s Jazz Café
Built as a theater in the 1920s, the Detroit Music Hall is home to an 1,800-seat auditorium as well as the more intimate Aretha’s Jazz Café, which opened in 2006 and was renamed for Detroit native Aretha Franklin in 2019. The venue features regular musical performances as well as an ongoing commitment to jazz education with vocal instruction, Jazz for Young People and Sunday night jazz jam sessions.
jazzcafedetroit.com

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