Tanglewood Jazz Festival

The Tanglewood Jazz Festival is held at the Boston Symphony Orchestra's summer home in the Berkshire hills of Lenox, Massachusetts. The lineup for the orchestra's annual Labor Day Weekend has now been announced. It will take place from September 2 through 4, 2005. Performing this year are Tony Bennett with the Count Basie Orchestra, Sonny Rollins, Toots Thielemans, Oscar Castro-Neves, Marian McPartland, The Yellowjackets, Bucky Pizzarelli, Madeleine Peyroux, Kenny Werner, Airto, Chris Botti, Skitch Henderson, Jay Leonhart, Diane Schuur, and the Caribbean Jazz Project.

The vocalist Diane Schuur will be opening the weekend with her Friday night performance at the Seiji Ozawa Hall auditorium. Schuur will be playing songs from her new CD "Schuur Fire" with the Caribbean Jazz Project. The CD includes the Brazilian guitarist Oscar Castro-Neves, who will be performing later on with Airto, Toots Thielmans, and Kenny Werner.

Toots Thielemans is reknowned for his jazz harmonica. He also plays guitar and whistles. This Belgian musician has been in the business since World War II. He has a very impressive collection of musicians that he has performed with. Thielemans is probably best known for his classical piece, "Bluesette."

If you are interested in the work of the pianist and composer Skitch Henderson, you should go to the performance on Saturday, September 3, which will be held at noon. Henderson will be performing with the guitarist Bucky Pizzarelli and the bassist Jay Leonhart.

Following Henderson's performance, Marian McPartland will be doing a live taping of Madeleine Peyroux at 3 p.m. in Ozawa Hall for her popular radio program "Piano Jazz." This year, her program will be celebrating 27 seasons on National Public Radio. Peyroux is a vocalist. She had her debut recording in 1996, which Time Magazine considered "the most exciting, incolving vocal performance by a new singer" for the year. Her style is a blend of acoustic blues, country ballads, torch songs, and pop. Her latest recording is "Careless Love."

The headliner for this year's Festival is on Saturday at 8 p.m. in the Koussevitzky Music Shed. Tony Bennett will be performing with the Count Basie Orchestra. They will be celebrating their 1959 recording "Basie & Bennett." Bennett has had an extremely successful career. He has sold over 50 million records, some of which have gone platinum and gold. He has also received 12 Grammy Awards as well as a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. Farthermore, Bennett was praised by the United Nations when they honored him as their "Citizen of the World." The Count Basie Orchestra will be conducted by Bill Hughes. It was the Basie band of the 1930's that created swing.