If you were to ask ChatGPT to design an ideal jazz festival, how would you write the prompt (stay with me here; every online article these days has to refer to AI in some way)?
You’d have to start with a great venues, easily accessible and welcoming, make some of them outdoors and order great weather. A nearby body of water makes a nice addition, so throw that in. Affordability is essential, so why not make it free? And any great music festival has to start with great music, so that’s table stakes. And the vibe. It has to have a great vibe.
Of course, ChatGPT doesn’t know from vibes or great music, so this exercise is strictly hypothetical, but let me give you the answer nonetheless: Saturday’s third edition of the Hingetown Jazz Festival is pretty close to ideal.
Clock this: three cool venues, BOP STOP, Jukebox and Saucy Brew Works, all a short walk away from one other. The final BOP STOP performance will be outdoors on the patio (sorry, ideal weather is something you can’t build in) where lawn seating affords a view of the lake and the sunset. Best of all, it’s still free.
All this is outwardly so perfect as to seem inevitable, but as planning began for 2025, a three-peat was anything but. It took a heroic effort by co-directors Amber Rogers and Daniel Bruce to gather the resources to sustain the festival after its association with the Local 4 Music Fund ended.
Enter Akron’s Open Tone Music to act as fiscal sponsor agents for the grants and other funding necessary to produce the festival. ”This festival would not exist if they hadn’t lent us their nonprofit status and stuck their necks out for us,” Rogers said. “They’ve put a tremendous amount of trust and faith in us to run this in a way that reflects well on them. They are the true heroes of the hour.”
Rogers and Bruce have certainly hit on a winning concept, but like chefs at a five-star restaurant, they know the value of changing the menu to keep things fresh. This year, that includes the starting time of 3 p.m., to minimize aural competition with the air show.
Saucy Brew Works, knowing a good thing when they saw one, joins the roster of venues replacing Transformer Station, which was unavailable due to a previously scheduled exhibition.
But the most notable change—and the festival’s greatest attraction, is the lineup of bands, not one of which is a holdover from 2024. The musical range is impressive, from the exquisite interiority of Horizon (Jukebox, 5 p.m.) to the exuberant, plugged-in fusion of Jevaughn Bogard’s Abstract Sounds (Jukebox, 3 p.m.).
So is the age range of the players. Three generations separate ageless—and agelessly inventive 82-year-old Howie Smith, leader of Organ-ism (BOP STOP 7:15 p.m.) and Andru Dennis, whose Mana Cannon band will play BOP STOP at 6 p.m.
Even younger are the two ensembles of student musicians from Cleveland State (4:30 p.m.) and the Tri-C Jazz Studies program (5:30 p.m.) that are booked for Saucy Brew Works. Those ensembles represent the festival’s first venture into education. It’s a logical next step, Rogers said.
Thinking big while maintaining the human scale that makes the festival so welcoming is a big reason why this little festival that could is fast becoming a date to circle on the Labor Day weekend calendar.
It’s also the reason why Rogers and Bruce were recognized as 2025 Cleveland Jazz Heroes by the Jazz Journalists Association, an international organization that annually honors the “activists, advocates, altruists, aiders and abettors of jazz” in North America and the Caribbean.
I’ll present Rogers and Bruce with their awards on Saturday, but I suspect the certificates of recognition will not mean half as much to them as will the smiles on the faces of musicians playing for grateful audiences or the applause that greets them.
They are all part of the vibe that is the Hingetown Jazz Festival. “We wanted a jazz festival with a block party feel. It’s such a good vibe,” Rogers told me in response to a question about what makes the festival so great. “Such a good vibe.”
2025 Hingetown Jazz Festival, August 30
| 3 p.m. | Pulse | BOP STOP |
| 3:30 p.m. | Tim Powell Trio | Saucy Brew Works |
| 4 p.m. | Abstract Sounds | Jukebox |
| 4:30 p.m. | CSU Student Ensemble | Saucy Brew Works |
| 5p.m. | Horizon | Jukebox |
| 5:30 p.m. | Tri-C Jazz Studies Fellows | Saucy Brew Works |
| 6 p.m. | Andru Dennis’ Mana Cannon | BOP STOP |
| 6:30 p.m. | Bobby Selvaggio Trio | Jukebox |
| 7:15 p.m. | Organ-ism | BOP STOP |
| 8:30 p.m. | Reclamation Band | BOP STOP |
NOTE: This article was written by a real human being. No artificial intelligence or generative language models were used in its creation.
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