Third annual Juneau Jazz Fest kicks off Wednesday with jam sessions at a quartet of downtown sites
- Mark Sabbatini
- 2 hours ago
- 4 min read
One show gets last-minute change after performer planning fundraiser for ACLU of Alaska cancels upon being told to disassociate event from festival
By Mark Sabbatini
Juneau Independent
This year’s Juneau Jazz Festival is a lot like last year’s, except for a new featured guest performer and a new controversy involving a canceled show by a performer seeking to raise funds for a civil rights group.
The third annual festival is set to begin Wednesday with a free "Jazz Ramble" at four downtown venues. The festival is scheduled to continue through Saturday with free and ticketed performances at locations throughout Juneau, plus workshops from noon to 3 p.m. Saturday at Juneau-Douglas High School: Yadaa.at Kalé.
The most prominent musicians will again be the Kyle Athayde Dance Party, consisting of 26 musicians from multiple countries, who will instruct and perform with 200 students of all ages from Juneau, Fairbanks, Petersburg, Sitka and Ketchikan, according to festival organizers.
"He brings in different people as part of the group, but he writes all new and arranges all new music every year — not all new music, but mostly new music," said Sandy Fortier, a co-organizer of the festival, referring to Athayde. "So it's the same band, different music."
Another visiting headliner at this year’s festival is Martina DaSilva, a New York City-based musician scheduled to perform Friday night at JDHS and appear with the Kyle Athayde Dance Party on Saturday night at the high school.
"She plays with all different iterations of bands," Fortier said. "She's bringing in a trio this time. She is a vocalist, she plays ukulele sometimes and she is kind of like a multicultural artist, and plays different jazz styles and sometimes things in different languages. So she's just really high energy and interesting and varied."
Both evenings will also feature performances by student jazz bands from Southeast Alaska schools beginning at 5:30 p.m., and the All-Alaska Jazz Band — an audition-based group of high school musicians statewide — is scheduled to perform Saturday. The featured concerts each night are scheduled to begin at 7 p.m.
The Kyle Athayde Dance Party is scheduled to perform in multiple other settings throughout the festival including a free Brown Bag concert at noon Thursday at the Juneau Arts and Culture Center, at St. Ann’s Parish Hall from 9-11 p.m. Friday, a Big Band For Little Kids event from 9:30-10:45 a.m. Saturday at the Mendenhall Valley Public Library.
The Jazz Ramble begins at 5 p.m. Wednesday at the Triangle Bar with vocalist Ella Kelly and pianist Bob Athayde. The Bob Banghart Trio is scheduled to perform at Spice Cafe from 6-8 p.m., the Eddie Barbash Quarter at The Alaskan Hotel And Bar from 7-9 p.m., and the Rob Cohen Combo at the Crystal Saloon starting at 8 p.m.
The gig at the Crystal Saloon "will evolve into a jam session where the out of town artists take over, mixing with local jazz artists," according to a festival press release.
Originally scheduled to perform at The Alaskan was the Spencer Edgers Band, which billed its show as a fundraiser for the ACLU of Alaska, with Edgers noting in a social media post the organization is involved in "reporting immigration enforcement activity, forming family safety plans, and Know Your Rights information." However, that description was shared in a message announcing the show was cancelled because Juneau Jazz and Classics, which organizes the festival, didn’t want to be associated with the fundraiser.
"What I was told by Juneau Jazz and Classics leadership was that I could proceed with doing it, but they wanted their logo and any mention of their organization removed from any promotional materials, and that was just something I couldn't agree with," Edgers said in an interview Tuesday. "So I just opted to reschedule the show and just do it the way that we wanted to do it, not affiliated with Jazz and Classics."
Edgers said he is planning to perform the show in March at The Alaskan.
Alexander Serio, named interim executive director of JJAC as of Dec. 1, said Tuesday the nonprofit organization as a general rule doesn’t support outside fundraisers of any kind being linked with the festival events. He said JJAC also partners with other organizations, such as the Juneau School District, which have limits on such fundraisers.
Serio said JJAC’s board, in a meeting after learning about Edgers’ planned fundraiser, decided to ask him to remove JJAC’s name rather than the ACLU of Alaska’s from the show’s references.
"We absolutely don't want to silence his voice as an artist because everybody has a voice and everybody has freedom of speech, and that's an important part of being an artist," Serio said.
Fortier, who served as the JJAC’s executive director from 2009-2011 and again from 2019-2025, said she is unaware of any previous event linked to a fundraiser involving an activist cause of any political slant.
• Contact Mark Sabbatini at editor@juneauindependent.com or (907) 957-2306.
