I know that common Seattle wisdom holds that fall in our fair city starts the week immediately after Labor Day. But I think autumn truly begins whenever the Earshot Jazz Festival kicks off in a blaze of horns, flutes, and drums.
This week, the 37th edition of the beloved annual jazz fest commences (Oct. 10 - Nov. 2) with a slate of exciting musicians and groups. One featured player this month is Seattle-born-and-raised drummer and MC Kassa Overall, who will be playing with Senegalese bassist Alune Wade at Hidden Hall (Oct. 25, 8 p.m.).
I had the distinct pleasure of profiling Doris Duke winner Overall for Black Arts Legacies this year. He blends jazz and hip-hop into a unique mix of music that represents both his genius as a drummer and the reflectiveness of his writing capabilities.
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“I’m a little obsessed with making something that people will be into many years in the future,” he told me earlier this year of his guiding principle. “I look at people from the past, and sometimes the greatest artists will not get their shine at the time. If you think too much about the shine at the time, you might not make the dopest thing you can make.”
I’ve been listening to a lot of the late, great Dorothy Ashby recently (Afro-Harping is one of the best records of all time), so I’m particularly excited to see jazz harpist (and Ashby acolyte) Brandee Younger and her trio on the docket at the Langston Hughes Performing Arts Institute (Oct. 30, 8 p.m.) — it’ll be a gas.
Autumn also bolsters the joy of jazz band battles, which Earshot has dutifully attended to. The Garfield HS Jazz Band and Roosevelt HS Jazz Band will throw down in a Battle of the Bands showdown (Oct. 25, 5 p.m.). If you’re an alum of either, be sure to don your school’s colors!
P.S. Jazz is having something of a moment in Pioneer Square. The Seattle Jazz Fellowship’s Monday-night jam sessions (at 103 S. Main Street) have blown up on social media among the youth. The kids want jazz!
Truly nothing beats cozying up in a movie theater during fall and, luckily, you’ll have the chance to catch independent films hailing from Bhutan to Peru.
< For its 20th anniversary, South Asian arts organization Tasveer Film Festival (Oct. 8 - 12, opening night Oct. 9) is going big. Like 100 films from 22 countries big. Their centerpiece showcase includes I, the Song, a Bhutanese movie about a teacher embroiled in a mistaken sex tape scandal. Roll through the fest to take a gander at the org’s new space, the Tasveer Film Center, which formerly housed Ark Lodge Cinemas on Rainier Avenue South.
< Then there’s the Seattle Latino Film Festival (Oct. 10 - 19), where the opening night at the Frye includes the short Sweet Boys, which follows two friends in East Harlem in the early 2000s, and feature film The Ladder, a sci-fi flick in which an aging fisherman undergoes an operation that will change his life (director Emilio Torres will be in attendance). Catch the rest of the fest over at The Beacon Cinema.
< All the reality-heads can get their fix at SIFF DocFest (Oct. 16 - 23), which runs at SIFF Cinema Uptown (except the public speaking-focused Speak at SIFF Cinema Downtown). Get an intimate look at the life of experimental jazz musician and composer Sun Ra in Sun Ra: Do the Impossible, or check out Runa Simi and learn about a Peruvian voice actor and his son’s journey to dub The Lion King in Quechua.
< BONUS: For those craving a bit more of an escape, the Orcas Island Film Festival (Oct. 15 - 19) has a truly stellar lineup featuring acclaimed films from the Cannes, New York and Venice Film Festivals, like Hamnet, Magellan, and Frankenstein. Fill out your Oscar ballot early!
Festive festivities continue in other facets of Seattle’s arts world … including the first-ever Irish Arts and Literature Showcase (Oct. 10 - 12) at Town Hall, Folio in Pike Place Market, SPL Downtown and Hugo House. If you’ve wanted to tuck into some James Joyce this fall, ease yourself into the Irish author’s oeuvre with a talk by folk singer/songwriter Gráinne Hunt (of Hibsen, a folk music duo inspired by Joyce’s work n) and Dr. Derek Hand about Dubliners, music and songwriting.
Bookworms may want to follow that up with the Seattle Antiquarian Book Fair (Oct. 18 - 19) at Exhibition Hall at Seattle Center. Book dealers from across North America will be on site with their wares, which include pulp fiction magazines, medieval books of hours, ephemera, broadsides, prints, maps and more. For those who love the smell of old, yellowing books, this is the place to be next weekend.
Downtown, at both of its two locations, Base Camp Studios is opening TELEPHONE (Oct. 10 - Nov. 30), a sprawling group show featuring thousands of artists from across the globe. Participants played a massive game of telephone (Remember? That game where one person whispers something to someone who whispers something to someone until the original something turns out completely different?), in which one artwork gets passed to several artists who reinterpret that work and pass it along. It’s a veritable festival in a phone!
And Georgetown delivers, once again, with the Georgetown Art Attack (Oct. 11). The always-great Mini Mart City Park will debut a new show this weekend: Winifred Westergard’s During the Exposure: Slow Photography, a collection that explores Westergard’s interest in “the complexity of the human face and the quiet resilience of the natural world.”
Though not technically part of Art Attack, the Possibilities Expo II (Oct. 10 - 11) is taking over the Georgetown Steam Plant with experimental music, poetry and kinetic light art. The spooky season hath commenced!
Still catching up on Season 2 of Art by Northwest? Check out our recent profiles of woodblock printer Reinaldo Gil Zambrano and forest-floor photographer Melinda Hurst Frye.
