Music festivals tend to be backloaded, primarily to keep people coming back for more, but as a nice side effect it keeps the most happening stuff fresh for critics who do post-festival wrap-ups. Thus this writer is basking in the afterglow of last night's smash "A Night in Treme"—maybe the first time an event at the staid ol' Kennedy Center ended with ushers lining the front of the stage to prevent its being stormed—and still flush with the profound impact of Bobby McFerrin at the Warner Theatre. Well played, DCJF. Well played.

It was a good year for the festival. It regained its keystone, Jazz on the National Mall, and a deep-pocketed sponsor (Bing). And, in addition to the above events, it offered the legendary Heath Brothers (one of whom, Tootie, served as a house drummer throughout the entire festival), DCJF favorite Cyrus Chestnut (who served as house pianist), alto saxophonist Antonio Hart, and The Brass-A-Holics. A pretty good stock of artists, and that's before we mention the usual gang of local talent. Oh, and Tomas Fujiwara, Darius Jones, and JD Allen, the headliners of this year's new CapitalBop Jazz Loft arm of the festival.

That last is a major development. This city is a stronghold of traditional jazz, make no mistake about it, but this year in particular has seen a revival of the post-bop and progressive streams' fortunes in D.C., and these need to be showcased and celebrated as well. The festival took a bold step in enlisting Giovanni Russonello and Luke Stewart to broaden its appeal. Russonello and Stewart went them one better: Allen, for example, has a progressive vision but is not terribly far removed from the mainstream, and CapitalBop could easily have held that line with its full series; instead, it embraced a broad spectrum, adding in the genuine cutting edge pf Fujiwara and Jones, as well as local straightahead-ers (Amy Bormet, The Jolley Brothers) and experimenters (Stewart's OOO Trio). The partnership apparently isn't a definite for future festivals, but its establishment this year did great things for both sides of it. Letting it dissolve could be a significant step backward for both.

Not to say that everything was perfect. I've already discussed the scheduling problems; the festival's broad lineup, impressive as it is, also suffers a little bit in comparison to last year's glorious 24-country kaleidoscope. Furthermore, an old gripe raised its head again this year: the length of the festival. The calendar was stretched a little thin in a couple of spots; its second day, for example, had exactly one act that didn't appear regularly in town—and that one had appeared elsewhere, for free, on the previous night.

Which also brings up an interesting controversy. There have been some debates about the heavy reliance on local acts; that's a valid point for D.C. residents who are looking for something different and see that much of the schedule is the stuff they can see any night of the week. This can be frustrating to me, too—but in the end I can't get too worked up about it. For one thing, this is an inevitable facet of a jazz festival in any city with a thriving jazz scene: Really, how many people at the festivals in New York (Or Chicago, or New Orleans) aren't that scene's usual suspects? For another thing, DCJF attracts a healthy chunk of its audience from outside D.C. As festival producer Charlie Fishman pointed out, those people don't know who plays our clubs, when, or how often, and ought to be told about what we have to offer here. For that matter, there are plenty of locals who know nothing about D.C. jazz beyond the festival, and those people ought to be informed, too. And how about the musicians themselves, who are deserving of the extra publicity? There are those who don't want it (as I've said before, that's between them and the festival); those who do, like Bormet and the Jolleys, or Victor Provost and Lena Seikaly, deserve it. And who doesn't want a major jazz festival on their resume?

None of this, however, has dulled my appetite for next year's DC Jazz Festival. Indeed, I'm curious to see its developments, from the CapitalBop association to how it can possibly top sublime moments like McFerrin. It will also be interesting to see what happens with the traditional NEA Jazz Masters concert (which was planned for this year, but didn't work out) now that the NEA is phasing out the Jazz Masters program. Fishman and the DCJF staff have their work cut out for them; undoubtedly they'll find compelling routes.

David Simon and HBO's Treme—a chronicle of the musicians and other residents of New Orleans struggling to rebuild their homes and lives after Hurricane Katrina—could never hope to meet the bar set by their previous Baltimore-based series, The Wire. But it has done something that its predecessor couldn't: For all its somberness and hardship, it reintroduced America to a city within its own boundaries whose life and culture deserve to be celebrated. Jazz, both traditional and contemporary; gospel; rhythm & blues; funk; hip-hop; and frothing amalgamations of the above have gained a forum and a newly enthusiastic audience via a television program with a fervid fan base. As evidence, the closing show of the DC Jazz Festival, a showcase at the Kennedy Center called "A Night in Treme," is sold out.

But this is one of those shows where you stand in long cancellation lines if you have to. Emceed by Treme star Wendell Pierce, it features contemporary representatives of New Orleans' musical traditions, many of whom have appeared on the show: the Rebirth Brass Band, trumpeter/singer James Andrews, clarinetist Dr. Michael White, trombonist "Big Sam" Williams, and alto saxophonist and musical director Donald Harrison. You don't see lineups like this outside The Big Easy itself, and unless you've got a trip forthcoming, this is can't-miss stuff. Find a way to be there.

"A Night in Treme" begins at 7:30 p.m. at the Kennedy Center Concert Hall, 2700 F Street NW. $20-$65. Sold out.

Bobby McFerrin's appearance with Afro Blue last night at the Warner Theatre was the finest concert in the history of the D.C. Jazz Festival.

For disclosure's sake, I am not qualified to make that statement. I haven't been to every concert in the history of the festival (nobody has), and I even missed one recent festival (2006) in its entirety. But I am confident that my verdict will be upheld on every appeal. This performance was, from start to finish, a glorious, unqualified triumph.

For starters, if anything, my previous effusions have understated McFerrin's abilities as a vocalist. By the end of his opening tune (a wordless, nameless piece that perhaps was improvised), he had already done everything I'd credited him with—and was ready to move on to new tricks. The next, his tune "Baby," found him handling interlocking rhythms on his own; "Drive" featured an interlude of throat singing, McFerrin emitting two simultaneous pitches; and, in a rendition of The Beatles' "Blackbird," an alternation, syllable by syllable, between his high and low singing ranges—interpolated by bird whistles. In between came Frankie Valli-style falsettos, sublime scat, a Miles Davis croak, and clowning around in perfect operatic affect, both alto and baritone. (Both McFerrin's parents were opera singers.) He has far, far more talent than any one human being has a right to.

And if Afro-Blue's billing was second, it was surely a very close second. Roger Treece conducted a 26-piece-strong iteration of the choir, including leader Dr. Connaitre Miller and mouth percussionist David Worm (doing an uncanny impression of a trap set). They had several features of their own (with McFerrin as accompanist); "Messages," a piece of both religious and secular inspiration, and the closing "Wailers"—both tracks from McFerrin's VOCAbuLarieS album—delivered the evening's profoundly emotional moments: anxiety, reflection, catharsis, nostalgia, hope, and pure joy. And there were marvelous moments for individuals as well. McFerrin invited members of Afro Blue to perform scat duets, with Reginald Bowens joining him for a magnificent take on Chick Corea's "Spain" and Miller herself coming down for "Bye Bye Blackbird."

McFerrin also offered the spare mike to the audience, with a very eager Ken Caldwell taking the stage to join in nailing McFerrin's second most famous recording, the fourth-season intro to The Cosby Show. That was only one of many bits of audience participation; McFerrin divided the audience into sections at one point, at another designating spots on the stage floor as representing notes and jumping between them as the audience sang.

Then came an awe-inspiring moment, one that at first seemed a joke. "Let's do some Bach, shall we?" McFerrin asked, to cheers. He mentioned an "Ave Maria" that had been written over Bach's famous cello prelude, and said "I'll do the prelude, you all do the 'Ave Maria.'" Most assumed he was kidding, and McFerrin fueled that impression with laugh lines ("If you're Jewish, you can sing 'Oy Vey Maria'..."). But then he began intoning the cello prelude, and from the darkened theater came the high, airy sounds of the "Ave," so hauntingly beautiful that this writer expected McFerrin to introduce a choir surreptitiously seated in the audience when it ended. He didn't—it was a spontaneous and truly magical moment.

The evening was as close to perfection as any I've ever seen on stage, in any medium, and even the douchebag in the audience who kept bellowing "ENCORE!" long after it was either funny or potentially effective is forgiven. Meantime, please, God, let someone have recorded it.

It's all been leading up to this, funseekers.

For many music festivals, a daylong program of artists on an outdoor stage would constitute the entire festival. For the DC Jazz Festival, Jazz on the National Mall is merely the crown jewel of a two-week, 50-venue event. And as crown jewels go, six-and-a-half free hours of jazz in the shadow of the Washington Monument is tough to beat. Especially when the lineup includes Nigerian world-fusioneers Toby Foyeh and Orchestra Africa; Chilean vocalist Claudia Acuna and her quartet; trumpet star Roy Hargrove and his hip-hop/jazz project, RH Factor; harmonica virtuoso Frederic Yonnet; and, to end the evening, Latin-jazz pioneer Eddie Palmieri’s All-Star Salsa Orchestra. It’s a powerful cross-section of the current world of straight-ahead jazz—in other words, it really could be a festival all its own.

Jazz at the National Mall takes place from 1:00 to 7:30 PM, Rain or Shine, at the Sylvan Amphitheater, 15th Street and Independence Avenue SW. Free.

Washington City Paper: You guys had been doing these jazz lofts for several months before the festival started; how did you integrate it into the festival?

Giovanni Russonello: It started with a meeting I had with Sunny Sumter, the executive director, and Anu Thapa, who works at the festival as well. Basically I got an e-mail from them that said “We’d like to meet with you, because CapitalBop is really cool and we appreciate what you’re doing.” And I appreciated that, so we set up a meeting—just a lunch, at Kramerbook, about three months ago. We just sort of rapped back and forth; they were interested in buying ad space, which they did, and then we got onto the topic of, “I just want to mention that we’ve been doing shows ourselves.”

I said, “We’ve been doing these jazz lofts and they’ve drawn a really diverse crowd, a young-skewing crowd.” Their eyes sort of widened up and they said, “Oh, look at that; that’s the one thing we haven’t figured out how the hell to do, get younger people in the door.” So we said, “Let’s do a jazz loft.” And we just took it from there, and Luke and I started planning it: I came back to him later that day, and he was like “Holy crap, we gotta start working on it because that’s a great idea.”

WCP: So was it you, then, Luke, who decided to take it in a more avant-garde direction?

Luke Stewart: In a way. I don’t like to portray it as trying to bring in, quote-unquote, “avant-garde.” But I do want to nurture a different take on jazz that the District of Columbia hasn’t nurtured as much in the past, especially since the closing of d.c. space, where a lot of those acts would come in. In the jazz scene here, one particular facet of the scene is very heavily represented, almost to the point where it’s the go-to thing for jazz. And it also represents a whole national debate, the whole “what is jazz.”

I just feel like it’s important to really emphasize the other facets of jazz, which I like to call “forward-thinking,” or “progressive.” There are people who are doing these cutting-edge things with music, and they’re attracting younger listeners with that approach—it’s not your grandmother’s jazz. They’re taking new approaches and they’re making them palatable to not only younger listeners, and from my angle that’s where the future’s gonna be.

GR: And to that point about the false dichotomy that’s framed by the debate—there’s gotta be either avant-garde, or straightahead. That creates more problems than it needs to, in and of itself. So Luke is right, obviously; we both agree that there’s only hard bop in DC. That’s an exaggeration, certainly, but when you think of DC jazz you think of that hard, four-to-the-bar swing.

LS: You think of those straightahead jam sessions at HR-57.

GR: But like I said, that dichotomy doesn’t need to exist. And if you look at the programming for our series, it’s not all stuff that would be written about in Down Beat as “avant-garde.” Tomas Fujiwara is in his own way on the vanguard, but he’s very tied to the tradition in certain ways, and he escapes from it in very different ways than, for instance, the Tri-O Trio, or separately, the Darius Jones Trio. So what we do is, we really just decided to do stuff that’s new, stuff that’s different, and stuff that’s original. And it wasn’t like it needs to fit within this really cool category that would make people say “Oh, they’re a free jazz festival,” or “They’re a composition-oriented avant-garde festival.” No, they’re just doing stuff that otherwise you might not see at the festival, but that’s new.

WCP: And has it brought in the younger crowd the festival was hoping for?

LS: Well, just due to the fact that our other shows have been donation-based admission, and it’s a smaller space in a place that’s traditionally been for DIY indie-rock shows, there’s already a built-in younger audience. But this time, we started charging ticketed admission, and that shut out a little bit of that crowd.

GR: But if you looked at the audience at the Fridge [the venue for the festival’s first loft show], if you’d turned off the audio and just looked from the stage outward, you would not have said “I’m at a jazz show.” It was significantly a young crowd, and a diverse one, if not as diverse as we would have liked.

WCP: Has the festival been satisfied with the audience you’ve brought in?

LS: I think so. I think they’ve been surprised.

WCP: Do you anticipate this being a onetime thing for the festival, or do you expect to be partnered with them year in, year out?

GR: Who knows? Maybe we’ll do a big announcement article sometime soon about something big that might be brewing. Or maybe we won’t—we’ll see. We’re trying to figure out whether we want to take a bold step or not, and if we do we’re not really sure what that would be. There are some thoughts obviously. Whenever you experience a lot of success and you see a lot of people enjoying themselves, you want to keep it going, you know?

You've been hearing about it for weeks, if not months, festivalgoers: CapitalBop Jazz Loft, DC Jazz Festival Edition.

For some time, members of the D.C. jazz scene have been pushing for an avant-garde component to the city’s major annual event; the organizers demurred, with reasons varying from “it’s not D.C.’s style,” to guesses that it’s simply not on artistic director Paquito D’Rivera’s radar. But this year, along came CapitalBop and its honchos Giovanni Russonello and Luke Stewart (the latter, in particular, is the website’s avant-garde wing) to demonstrate that there’s an appreciative and sizable audience for the “out” stuff—not to mention a few built-in venues for it.

Hence, a partnership is born, and it manifests itself tonight. First up is The OOO Trio—or the Tri-O Trio—featuring Stewart on bass, as well as longtime D.C. stalwart Aaron Martin on saxophone and drummer Sam Lohman. Theirs is a free improv band, though not a terribly far-out one; Martin plays serpentine but surely melodic lines over a firm swing from Stewart and Lohman that nonetheless follows Martin all the way (and he them). They are followed by another, perhaps even edgier, saxophone trio: that of altoist Darius Jones. He's got a big sound on the alto sax and, though he's got as firm a grasp of melody as Martin, is a much more aggressive horn player. His performance is more about his raw, emotional, and often violent attack that carries a surprising payload of the blues. Each note, even on the ballads, hits with shattering force.

The show starts at 9 p.m. at  Red Door, 443 I St. NW. $16.

Photo by Petra Cvelbar

Tenor saxophone player Jimmy Heath is the eldest surviving member of the Heath Brothers; he's been a key figure in jazz for more than 60 years, along with his older brother, bassist Percy (who died in 2005), and younger brother, drummer Albert "Tootie." The NEA jazz master is a major stylist on the tenor, as well as a major composer who's had several pieces enter the standard canon ("C.T.A.," "Gingerbread Boy"), and an educator whose protégés include 2011 DCJF performer Antonio Hart. Last year he published his autobiography, I Walked With Giants, and released the first post-Percy Heath Brothers album, Endurance (Jazz Legacy Productions). Ahead of his two-night stand at Bohemian Caverns with the Heath Brothers Quartet, Jimmy spoke to Washington City Paper about his work as a composer, his trips to Washington, and performing with the Heath Brothers Band without the eldest Heath.

Washington City Paper: You seem to be in D.C. fairly regularly; is this just a great place to work, or just the place that keeps calling?

Jimmy Heath: Well, I don’t know how often it’s been; I’m there once in a while. But you know, Washington is a good jazz city because it’s an international city.

WCP: Well, when I say “regularly,” I specifically mean that I often see you at various events at the Kennedy Center.

JH: Oh, yeah, that’s possible. Maybe once or twice a year or so, with either the Monk Institute or with the Dizzy Alumni Big Band. Not often with the Heath Brothers, although we did play the jazz club at the Kennedy Center. NEA Jazz Masters events, too; I am one, and if there’s something going on a lot of the time I’m there.

WCP: Incidentally, what are your thoughts on the NEA ending the Jazz Masters program?

JH: Oh, I think it’s terrible. I pay a whole lot of taxes and I think a lot of musicians deserve the recognition as well as the financial help that they’re given. All other art forms seem to take precedence over the jazz world.

WCP: You guys had a record out last year. Have you been gigging or touring for it?

JH: Yes, we have. We just got back from a European trip, which was nice; we went to Italy, Germany, Austria, Copenhagen, and Paris. That was quite a trip—if it hadn’t been for some one-nighters there! [Chuckles]

WCP: Had you been gigging with the band before the record, but after Percy passed?

JH: Oh, yeah, we had been working. We had a pretty good run when Percy was around, and it’s continued pretty good with the quartet, with the different bassists.

WCP: It must have been a difficult transition to working without him.

JH: Well, you know, he was my brother. And he was a great bassist and a beautiful person so we had a wonderful time. We had a closeness that is hard to duplicate, because we all loved the music. And our parents loved the music, and we saw that we had music.

WCP: Then you share that closeness with Tootie as well?

JH: Oh, yeah. It’s a family affair, we love each other. Musically and otherwise, we get along fine. Me and Percy used to get a little edgy sometimes; he was the older brother and he’d try to tell us all what to do, and I knew more about the music than him, so I’d try to tell him what to do. I had more of a variety of musical ideas and experience than him—after all, I was the first jazz performer in the family, before him, although his name was probably bigger because of the Modern Jazz Quartet. But, you know, he and I had been in the Dizzy Gillespie band together even before the Modern Jazz Quartet.

WCP: Is it your connection to Dizzy that brings you to the DC Jazz Festival?

JH: Well, yes, via John Lee. John Lee is the one that keeps the Dizzy Gillespie thing going, with the Alumni Big Band that I play in also. It’s unfortunate that Moody left us in December, because he and I were the oldest members of that band—Moody being in the band since ’45, and me since ’49. So we were the elders in the Dizzy alumni band. So I miss my buddy—my “section buddy,” we called each other.

WCP: How often are you working with that band?

JH: We just got through a smash of a week at Blue Note; we were there for six days, and we sold out every show for six days. That’s our main spot, you know, but we sometimes come to the Kennedy Center to play with certain vocalists or other attractions. And we do go on the road, occasionally, too. So it’s still happening, the Dizzy Alumni Big Band. And they got some talented young people in that band that Dizzy would be very proud of. Antonio Hart is one.

WCP: I was going to ask you about Antonio, since he’s also at the festival.

JH: Oh yeah. Antonio was a student of mine at Queens College, and I was able to maneuver—and his talent afforded him getting—a position at Queens College. He’s extremely capable, and I love him. I wrote a song for him called “Like a Son.” And he never calls me Jimmy; I say, “Man, we’ve been knowing each other 'bout 15, 20 years now!” But it’s “Mr. Heath, so and so.” That’s him; he’s just a perfect gentleman in the old-school fashion. He’s a wonderful young man, and he can play, man. I’m very proud of him.

WCP: You reminded me, in talking about writing a song for him, of what a prolific composer you are as well as a player. Does it still take up a huge chunk of time?

JH: Oh, it’s always taken up a lot of my time. I’m one of those people who have mixed devotions. [chuckles] You know I just did a commissioned piece for the August Wilson Center for African American Culture in Pittsburgh, which is a beautiful facility—one of the greatest buildings I’ve ever seen for an African American. And I wrote this piece for the August Wilson Center; Sean Jones conducted the band, and I went out and played one little section of this extended composition.

WCP: Will there be a recording of that, perchance?

JH: I don’t think so. You know, it’s very difficult to record a big band these days; my last record, Turn Up the Heath, I spent half of my NEA grant money to do that myself.

WCP: Why is that?

JH: Well, the record companies are not putting up money for them, and they’re disappearing. So people are making recordings for themselves, or for small companies like Jazz Legacy Productions, or the Planet Arts, who record the big bands when they get some funding, like the Monday night big band at the Vanguard, or my big-band album Turn Up the Heath, for which I paid half and they paid half. And also, distribution is very sad nowadays. Everybody’s stealing your music from the computer; it’s a different era. We get our best results by selling CDs when we perform. Where’s your record shops?

WCP: Do you compose on saxophone or piano?

JH: Both! Dizzy told me in 1946, he said, “If you’re gonna write music, man, you better learn the keyboard!” I took his word for it, and I play piano all the time and sing melodies to myself, and then go to the saxophone. And vice versa. Inspiration comes on either.

WCP: Do you write with specific arrangements in mind?

JH: Yeah. I write with the Finale program, on the computer. I’ve been doing that since I was teaching at Queens College, since 1986 or ’87. Oh, man—it’s a great editing device. If you write a counterpoint line or something, and you play it back and you say, “Oh, man, that ain’t nothing. Let me try another.” You say, “Delete!” and it’s gone. You put another line in and say “Ah!”

Now, when the breath of life gets in the arrangement, that’s when it comes to fruition. When somebody plays it. Not the machine, because the machine sounds like a glorified accordion.

WCP: But you can write down a bit of a melody and then immediately hear what it sounds like.

JH: Oh, sure. Duke didn’t have that. He wrote some great music anyway—but Clark Terry told me he used to bring in stuff that was wonderful, and he’d say “Pass that back in,” and he’d tear it up. He didn’t like it. But he had to bring it in to hear it. But now the computer allows you to hear it before you take it in and bring it to life.

WCP: Don’t you lose something in that, though?

JH: Well, you know, sometimes you write things with the machine that’s very difficult to play on the horn! You can just turn the dial and make it play very, very fast. Any line you write, it reproduces. But sometimes—I have to delete that. [laughs] But the proof in the pudding is when you bring it in and have the band play it.

WCP: Will we hear any of that new material when you play in D.C.?

JH: Yeah, there’s new material that we haven’t even rehearsed. I gave them the music—the guitarist that’s performing is wonderful, and Cyrus is always just a pleasure to play with. He’s just so full of music.

Photo by Richard Conde

He didn't seem to mind being lumped into the festival without his knowledge. Some musicians and venues have been happy to have the promotion and have even asked to be added to the program; others are a bit less enthusiastic. (Notably missing from this year's program are the listings at Blues Alley, the locus of some tension on this subject in previous years—tension which this writer encountered firsthand during the 2010 festival.) That's an issue for the parties involved to work out. One would expect, though, that the people running the festival would make it a point to know who was and was not in their program. Yet three times this week, I've encountered discrepancies between the festival's schedule and the actual event in question.

One discrepancy was a typo on the DCJF website — nothing to get riled up about. But the second involved an apparent confusion all around. What was listed on the festival website and program as "German Jazz All-Stars" on the Kennedy Center Millennium Stage (featuring bassist Pascal Niggenkemper and pianist Jo Junghanss), was listed by Ken Cen as the Niggenkemper Trio, a decidedly multinational lineup. Festival staff deferred to the Kennedy Center: "We didn't book that one, they did," producer Charlie Fishman explained, "So whatever they say is what it is." (A spokesperson for the Kennedy Center couldn't be reached for comment.) As it turned out, the festival's program was closer to the truth: Niggenkemper and Junghanss both appeared in a quartet with drummer Devin Gray and flugelhornist Volker Goetz, billed as "the 2011 German Academic All-Stars." Goetz, to his credit, acknowledged that "there have been a few changes" to what was listed; still, the festival distancing itself from a concert in its own program was, well, disconcerting.

Last evening, during a correspondence with D.C. saxophone whiz Brian Settles—whose trio has already performed once during the festival—I mentioned that I was planning to go see him at the gig listed in the program for tonight at JoJo Restaurant & Bar on U Street NW. "I'm not playing JoJo tomorrow night," Settles responded. "Not sure why they have me posted as such." So much for my planned pick for tonight. (According to Fishman, a staffer didn't confirm schedules with JoJo, as well as one other venue, but instead got their information from City Paper's listings for those locations. "We just have to live with it," he adds.)

Helpful as the promotion might be to local artists and venues, it stands to reason that the people presenting and producing the festival shouldn't place performances on their program without knowing what exactly those performances are, let alone whether they really exist. "You're like the CIA," Fishman joked after one of my repeat calls to his office for clarification. After another, "You've become the festival's official fact-checker!" Should it be necessary to be a CIA-like fact-checker? The organization should reconsider the practicality of advertising, as part of the festival, jazz events that are not their own—or at least of not getting accurate and up-to-date information on those events.

If you hadn't guessed by his instrument of choice, Provost is a native of the U.S. Virgin Islands, and brings the rhythms of his homeland to his music. What mostly comes through, though, is Provost's knockout conception of melody, with incredibly rich phrases unfurling from every new moment of his improvisations. It's made Provost an in-demand player outside of D.C., too: he's a frequent performer at the Umbria Jazz Festival in Perugia, Italy (one of the foremost festivals in the world), and a regular at Jazz at Lincoln Center in New York. In other words, he's a musician who belongs at the DC Jazz Festival, and lots of others too.

Provost plays with his Synthesis Quartet (pianist Noble Jolley, bassist Herman Burney, and drummer Amin Gumbs) tonight at 6 p.m. at the Kennedy Center Millennium Stage, 2700 F St. NW. Free.