DC JazzFest ends tonight - here's what made the 22nd edition worth every minute
Five days, 20 venues, a triple centennial, and Dee Dee Bridgewater backed by an all-women quartet. DC's biggest jazz festival wraps up at The Wharf this afternoon, and the Sunday lineup alone is a reason to head south.
In brief
DC JazzFest ends tonight - here's what made the 22nd edition worth every minute
Today is the last afternoon. If you haven't already made your way down to The Wharf, you still have time.
DC JazzFest 2026 opened Wednesday, September 2, and wraps this evening - Sunday, September 6 - with its signature Labor Day weekend finale along the Potomac. The 22nd annual festival spread performances across 20 venues in a dozen neighborhoods before culminating in a two-day waterfront finale at The Wharf. That number - 20 venues - tells you something about how this festival actually works. There is no single stage, no one-size wristband, no pretense that jazz belongs in just one room.
That geographic reach is central to the festival's identity. Rather than concentrating everything behind a single gate, DC JazzFest connects major international artists with the musicians, institutions, and audiences that sustain the District's jazz culture year-round. Over five days you could catch a set at Westminster Church, drop into Mr. Henry's on Capitol Hill - one of the oldest jazz bars in the city - and still make it to the waterfront for the headliners. Venues this year included The Wharf, Union Stage, Pearl Street Warehouse, Anthem Row, The Hamilton Live, Westminster Church, and Mr. Henry's.
A year of centennials
The programming hook this year had genuine historical weight. With performances taking place Sept. 2-6 across Washington, D.C., the festival marked major jazz centennials. Miles Davis and John Coltrane were both born in 1926; Randy Weston turned 100 in April. DCJF welcomed the African Rhythms Alumni Quintet celebrating Randy Weston at 100, and rising tenor saxophonist Isaiah Collier's Collier Plays Coltrane centennial project.
The centennial thread ran deepest through the Artist-in-Residence slot. Emmet Cohen led a quintet, with tenor saxophonist Tivon Pennicott and trumpeter Jeremy Pelt in the frontline, along with drummer Joe Farnsworth and bassist Yasushi Nakamura, in a program honoring the John Coltrane and Miles Davis centennials. That performance landed on Saturday at The Wharf. Emmet Cohen, a perennial fan favorite, returned this year as DCJF Artist-in-Residence; he performed on the mainstage with his band and led the festival's ever-popular jam session.
Cohen has become something of a social media phenomenon on the wings of his brilliant playing, his welcoming spirit, and his pandemic-era online live performances. His name draws people who've never been to a jazz festival. That's not an accident. The festival has put real thought into who holds the residency role, and Cohen brings in a crowd that sticks around to hear the artists they might not have come for.
Saturday's standout: Dee Dee Bridgewater's 'We Exist'
Saturday at The Wharf had the biggest draw. The recipient of a 2017 NEA Jazz Masters fellowship, Dee Dee Bridgewater is one of the leading voices of jazz vocal artistry - a triple Grammy Award winner, a Tony Award winner for her role in The Wiz, and a tireless champion for women in jazz, including as long-time host of the annual Mary Lou Williams Festival at the Kennedy Center.
NEA Jazz Master Dee Dee Bridgewater presented 'We Exist,' backed by a rising all-women ensemble featuring pianist Alexis Lombre, bassist Liany Mateo, and drummer Shirazette Tinnin. The name of the ensemble is its own statement, and Bridgewater has spent decades earning the credibility to make it land without being preachy about it.
Also on Saturday: the Bill Frisell Trio - with bassist Thomas Morgan and drummer Rudy Royston - offered the guitarist's unmistakable mixture of jazz, folk, blues, and open-ended improvisation. And Caribbean sounds took center stage at The Wharf courtesy of the Soca sounds of KES, and the trumpet and band of island folklorist Etienne Charles & Creole Soul. Two acts with completely different vocabularies, back-to-back on the same outdoor stage by the Potomac. That's what a good festival schedule looks like.
Sunday: what's left today
DC JazzFest at The Wharf runs from 2 to 10 p.m. on both days. Today's closing lineup shifts registers entirely from Saturday. The Sunday lineup includes saxophonist Joshua Redman and a celebration of jazz fusion band Weather Report by singer Kurt Elling and the Yellowjackets.
Redman is always worth showing up early for. His quartet plays at a level where the room - even an outdoor one - goes quiet in the right way. Kurt Elling and the Yellowjackets doing Weather Report is a different proposition altogether: loud, layered, keyboard-heavy, and closer to a rock show in its dynamics than anything you'd expect from a jazz stage. Multiple Grammy and Tony Award-winning song stylist Dee Dee Bridgewater and multiple Grammy Award winner Kurt Elling brought their artistry to The Wharf, as did multi-Grammy nominee Joshua Redman, one of the true signature voices of 21st century jazz saxophone.
Tickets for today start at $29 for single-day entry, with premium options at $49 and up. Single-day tickets are $29, $49, and up; two-day tickets are $55, $95, and up. Park anywhere along The Wharf's waterfront between Maine Avenue and 7th Street SW. Metro's Waterfront station on the Green Line puts you a five-minute walk away.
The rest of the city, all week
Beyond The Wharf, the weekday programming was quieter and, for some listeners, more interesting. Free all-day concerts at Anthem Row Downtown on September 3 included Butcher Brown, Marshall Keys, Soulful Path, and Corcoran Holt - four acts that would cost real money in any club setting. The festival also welcomed rapidly emerging jazz artists such as sensational drummer-bandleader Nate Smith, DC's own bassist Ben Williams, saxophonist Isaiah Collier, pianist José André, vocalist Shacara Rogers, and violinist Chelsey Green.
Recognized as the region's largest and most distinctive music festival, the DC JazzFest reaches nearly 100,000 visitors of all ages annually. That figure includes the free weekday events, which are where a lot of the city's actual jazz community spends its time - not because the Wharf headliners aren't worth the ticket, but because seeing Chelsey Green in a church in Dupont Circle is a genuinely different experience than any waterfront mainstage.
DMV pianist-composer Janelle Gill welcomed NEA Jazz Master pianist-organist-vocalist Amina Claudine Myers to her bandstand at Arena Stage - a homecoming of sorts, given that Gill is a local figure who built her reputation playing rooms far smaller than this.
The festival runs through 10 tonight. Tickets at dcjazzfest.org.
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CAN I KICK IT? screens New Jack City at the Sylvan Theater, Washington Monument, on Aug. 22. (Courtesy SHAOLIN JAZZ)
The live-cinema series CAN I KICK IT? returns to the National Mall this month with what its producers are calling the "Gangsters on the Mall" chapter of their free outdoor summer run. On Saturday, August 22, the SHAOLIN JAZZ production brings the 1991 crime classic New Jack City to the Sylvan Theater at the Washington Monument for a night of film, music, and community under the DC summer sky.
What sets the event apart is the sound. As the film plays, DJ 2-Tone Jones builds an original score in real time, reimagining one of the most iconic crime movies of the ’90s through hip-hop, soul, funk, and more. It is less a movie screening than a live performance built around the film.
The details:
Film: New Jack City (1991), with a live soundtrack by DJ 2-Tone Jones
When: Saturday, August 22 — seating opens at 7:30 p.m. (bring lawn chairs and blankets); film begins at 8:30 p.m.
Where: Sylvan Theater at the Washington Monument, Independence Ave SW & 15th St NW
A parking note from the organizers: expect road closures and restricted parking east of 14th Street NW due to a separate race event in the District. Roads west of 14th Street NW will be accessible and available for parking.
New Jack City is the second of three screenings in this year’s free CAN I KICK IT? outdoor series, which opened with Black Panther at Skyland Town Center and concludes with Scarface at the Lincoln Memorial on September 5. Produced by the Washington, DC-based multimedia arts company SHAOLIN JAZZ, the series has presented more than 150 live cinematic experiences at venues across the country, from Lincoln Center to SXSW.
"I wanted to be able to tell good stories with substance and remove the ‘ego’ out of the art," said Andrew Huang during a recent interview. Now, he’s building his career at the intersection of discipline, creativity and innovation.
Andrew Huang, founder of New Place Studios. (Courtesy photo)
As a Chinese American, Huang was reared with a deep respect for hard work, consistency and excellence. He describes his childhood as "not so affluent" and later attended college to hone his passion for videography. "In college I tried to do something I loved, which was video, but along the way I knew that I had to find a job. And so I thought, ‘what was the low hanging fruit to get to that stable 9 to 5 job?,’" he stated.
Later in life, Huang found himself working for corporations where his creativity was often limited, eventually leading to burnout. "I worked in a corporation for a long time and there were a lot of missing pieces. I wanted to fill in gaps missing in corporate video production," said Huang.
He later described how his upbringing and a mindset of "survival" led him toward a corporate career. However, his desire for balance and authentic storytelling ultimately pushed him to take the entrepreneurial leap.
"I founded a new place where you can create video and film with ‘substance and style,’" said Huang. His desire for work-life balance and passion for storytelling naturally evolved into a small business based in Virginia. With the launch of New Place Studios, the entrepreneur quickly found himself reconnecting with the values that would become the foundation of everything he creates behind the camera.
Huang said being a business owner has allowed him to first embrace himself. While others may see video as simply capturing moments, he sees it as a way to preserve stories that inspire, connect and leave a lasting imprint.
By combining cinematic visuals with cutting-edge production techniques and a keen understanding of branding, Huang helps organizations and individuals communicate their vision with purpose. He said understanding a client’s "why" serves as the compass for delivering the services they need.
One benefit of working with a small business, he said, is that clients get to see the production process unfold through a micro lens while working with the same faces throughout the entire project. "The work feels personal," said Huang.
Huang does not regret leaving behind the flash-over-substance mentality and corporate hustle culture. That does not mean the Asian American entrepreneur has been without challenges in the industry. "It’s relatively hard to find other Asian American creatives or people who would want to work with me in the DMV," said Huang.
He identifies the industry culture in which everyone is trying to blend in, creatives may fear displaying their Asian identity and some feel pressure to adopt an American corporate persona. He also points to what he describes as a level of gatekeeping within the industry. According to the U.S. Small Business Administration’s 2024 statistics, Asian American and Pacific Islander entrepreneurs own more than 3 million businesses and employ 5.2 million people in the United States.
After tapping into organizations such as SCORE, which offers free small business mentorship, New Place Studios has become a trusted creative partner throughout the DMV (Washington, D.C., Maryland and Virginia). The company produces a range of creative services, including commercials, corporate branding, documentaries, film, 2D animation, motion graphics and photography.
For Huang, entrepreneurship has become more than a departure from corporate life. It has given him the freedom to create with intention, build meaningful connections and tell stories that go beyond the surface.
The 2026 CAN I KICK IT? outdoor series. Poster courtesy of SHAOLIN JAZZ.
For three Saturdays this summer, some of Washington’s most familiar public spaces will do something they rarely do after dark: fill up with blankets, lawn chairs, and the sound of a movie being scored live, in real time. CAN I KICK IT?, the traveling “live cinema” series produced by the DC-based multimedia arts company SHAOLIN JAZZ, is bringing a free outdoor run to the city — pairing three era-defining films with an original soundtrack performed on the spot by DJ 2-Tone Jones.
The premise is what sets it apart from a normal screening in the park. Rather than simply pressing play, 2-Tone Jones builds a score as the film unfolds, pulling from hip-hop, soul, funk, jazz, rock, electronic music, and sounds from around the world. The result, the organizers say, is less a movie night than a one-time performance — the same film you know, wired to a soundtrack you have never heard and will not hear again. Guest DJs warm up the crowd starting at 7:30 PM before each 8:30 PM screening.
The 2026 outdoor schedule
All three events are free and open to the public.
Saturday, August 8 — Black Panther at Skyland Town Center. A pop-up marketplace and community activities kick off the evening; guest DJs at 7:30 PM, film at 8:30 PM. Marvel’s superhero epic gets a one-night-only live score in Southeast DC.
Saturday, August 22 — New Jack City at the Sylvan Theater, Washington Monument. Seating begins at 7:30 PM; the film starts at 8:30 PM. The 1991 crime drama plays out at the foot of one of the country’s most recognizable landmarks.
Saturday, September 5 — Scarface at the Lincoln Memorial. Seating at 7:30 PM; film at 8:30 PM. The series closes with Brian De Palma’s crime saga against the backdrop of the Memorial, scored live from start to finish.
First up: Black Panther at Skyland Town Center on August 8. Poster courtesy of SHAOLIN JAZZ.
A DC company with a national footprint
SHAOLIN JAZZ describes itself as a Washington-based arts company working at the intersection of music, film, art, and culture, and CAN I KICK IT? is its signature production. According to the organizers, the series has staged more than 150 live cinematic experiences around the country — at performing arts centers, museums, festivals, and cultural institutions including Lincoln Center in New York, SXSW, the Denver Center for the Performing Arts, Republic Square in Austin, the Tacoma Armory, and The Cary Theater.
“CAN I KICK IT? has always been about creating a shared experience,” said Gerald Watson, co-founder of SHAOLIN JAZZ. “When you combine iconic films with live music in public spaces, something special happens. People aren’t just watching a movie — they’re experiencing it together. That’s what makes these nights so memorable.”
Cinema as a community event
The DC run lands as cities across the country look for new ways to activate public space through arts and culture — and this series is a straightforward pitch for how to do it: take a landmark everyone already knows, add a film everyone has an opinion about, and let a live soundtrack turn the evening into something neighbors experience shoulder to shoulder. Families, film buffs, and music fans are all invited, and admission won’t cost a thing.
The CAN I KICK IT? outdoor series runs August 8, August 22, and September 5. All events are free; check SHAOLIN JAZZ (shaolinjazz.com) for the latest details and any weather updates before heading out.
