by Evan Streusand and Rachelle Rouse

It's like, Jazzville, man!

Diverse Arts Production Group and Katz's Deli are proud to present the 14th Annual Austin Jazz and Arts Festival. Begun in 1989 as the Clarksville Jazz Festival, the 2002 Festival continues DiverseArts' tradition of producing Austin's oldest jazz music event. Each year's event carries out our mission to present multidisciplinary, family-oriented programs that stress artistic quality, education and cultural appreciation.

On October 20 at Symphony Square, the Jazz Fest will showcase a variety of well-crafted programming of jazz music as an art form. The day will begin with a Jazz Brunch and family events at 11am. Matinee performances include local presenters and musicians. The Great Guitars Concert that evening will feature a wide range of guitar styles such as straight-ahead bebop, R&B, down-home Austin blues, and more unconventional songwriting. Part of this one-of-a-kind performance includes Mimi Fox and Leni Stern, two of the world's most accomplished women jazz guitarists. Following are guitar virtuoso Cornell Dupree and Austin's "Godfather of the Blues," W.C. Clark.

Educational, nonprofit, arts and crafts booths, and children's programming will round out the day's activities. Combined with the cooler October weather, this year's Jazz Fest will be the perfect way to spend a relaxing Sunday.

The 2002 event is a collaboration of many local nonprofit arts organizations including Epistrophy Arts, Women in Jazz, the Creative Opportunity Orchestra and Pro-Arts Collective. These organizations' mutual support fulfills the vision of the founder and executive director of DiverseArts, Harold McMillan, for a greater jazz future in Austin.

DiverseArtists

Griot Circle lets kids join in the music with percussion and instrumental fun. Grupo Fantasma blends funk, merengue, cumbia, and jazz. Their booty-shaking sound packs houses wherever they play in Austin. Fantasma's double rhythm section and three piece horn brigade consists of a versatile and talented cast of players who have performed with the Blue Noise Band, the Blimp, Golden Arm Trio, and Ta Mere among others.

Pamela Hart is Austin's best-loved female jazz singer, known for her rich and sultry vocals. She and her husband Kevin Hart founded Women In Jazz to promote the involvement of and provide performance opportunities for women in the local jazz scene. May I Come in? is Pamela's solo album.

Epistrophy Arts is Austin's leading presenter of experimental and improvisational jazz. Alex Coke, Alvin Fielder, Dennis Gonzalez, and Dave Dove will make up the Spiritual Unity Quartet.

Tina Marsh is artistic director and vocalist for Austin's Creative Opportunity Orchestra, an innovative group dedicated to composing and improvising progressive jazz music. Tina combines an eclectic mix of theatrical elements, spoken word, video, and avant-garde in her performances. Creative Opportunity Orchestra has made several albums including Benediction, RADIOactive, Transformation, and The Heaven Line, and an album of spirituals and lullabies.

Leni Stern was born in Munich, Germany, and started playing piano at the age of six and guitar at eleven. At seventeen, she formed her own acting company. Her radical productions sold out houses across Europe and attracted press and TV coverage. In 1977, she turned her attention to music and left for the United States to study film scoring at the Berklee College of Music in Boston. Film scoring gave way to her love for guitar and in 1981, Leni moved to New York City to play in a variety of rock and jazz bands. In 1983, she formed a group of her own with Paul Motion on drums and Bill Frisell on guitar. Leni's 1985 Clairvoyant was her first solo instrumental recording. Eight albums and 12 years later, in 1997, she released Black Guitar, her first vocal full-length release. Finally the Rain has Come, Leni's most recent album, came out earlier this year.

Mimi Fox grew up in New York City, started playing drums at nine, and guitar at age ten. She was inspired by the wide variety of music enjoyed by her family -- show tunes, classical, Dixieland, Motown -- and her own youthful inclination toward pop, folk, and R&B. When she was fourteen, she bought her first jazz album "because it was on sale." She had no jazz recordings and the one she chose had no guitarist, but she was "blown away" by it. That album, John Coltrane's classic Giant Steps, changed the course of her musical life. Fox began touring right out of high school. She moved to San Francisco in 1979, where she became a much sought-after musician. She is on the faculty of the innovative jazz school in Berkeley, California, and has appeared as guest clinician at the University of Connecticut, University of Oregon, the Britt Music Festival, and others. She has received numerous awards for her original scores for dance theatre and film. Her recording Standards (Origin Records) is a solo guitar tour de force, says Cadence Magazine. Throughout her career she has played with the likes of Charlie Byrd, Charlie Hunter, and the Turtle Island String Quartet, among others. Mimi Fox, fleet-fingered on both steel string acoustic and hollow body jazz guitars, is a compelling musician, prolific composer, talented arranger, inspired teacher, and dynamic leader of her own band.

Cornell Dupree fuses the glowing Texas R&B funk and New York City jazz. The guitarist started his career at sixteen in his hometown of Fort Worth, Texas, but was soon called to New York to play with King Curtis -- and for a while shared the guitar spot with some other newcomer called James Hendrix. Dupree's has combined his talents with many distinguished representatives of modern American music, including Aretha Franklin, Sam Cooke, Wilson Pickett, Miles Davis, Joe Cocker, The Temptations and more. In 1988 his Coast to Coast solo album was nominated for a Grammy award. Cornell Dupree's sensitive and suggestive guitar work has been praised for its ability to build an almost complete musical universe by using a few tones and phrasings that move just around the edge of the tune.

W.C. Clark, "The Godfather of Austin Blues," has been playing in Austin and around the world for more than forty years. Blues stars such as Lou Ann Barton, Marcia Ball, and Stevie Ray and Jimmie Vaughn have all perfected their craft under Clark's tutelage. Clark was long-called "Austin's Best-Kept Secret" by the local press until he began releasing solo albums in 1986. His latest release, From Austin with Soul, has taken his soul-drenched blues to new heights. The rest of the world is now in on what the city of Austin has known for decades: W.C. Clark is an innovative and creative artist whose soulful singing and tasty guitar playing reach out from Austin, with soul to all corners of the music-loving world.