Our Take: Labor Day Weekend

If you are looking for a great jazz experience this Labor Day Weekend, the search is an easy one. In alphabetical order, Aspen, Chicago, Dallas, Detroit, District of Columbia and Vail each have a “jazz” festival planned, though the term “jazz festival” often has a more historic than current meaning. The Jazz Aspen Snowmass Labor Day Experience features Imagine Dragons, Lenny Kravitz, and Luke Combs. That is an amazing lineup, one more than worth attending, but I am not sure that our jazz folks would abide using “Jazz” in the title.

I have spent some time with the good folks at Jazz Aspen Snowmass and there is no doubt that they are true music aficionados. While jazz was the original music of choice for the group, their current main shows embrace other genres. Their JAS Café, however, remains a hot bed of great jazz. Their upcoming winter offerings include Trombone Shorty, Christian McBride and Benny Green, as well as Niki Haris singing with The James Horowitz Trio. Horowitz is the brains behind Jazz Aspen Snowmass and a true friend of jazz.

We have chronicled our history with Vail Jazz Festival on several occasions. The ’25 edition reads like an alumni club of musicians from The Jazz Cruise: John Clayton, Terell Stafford, Lewis Nash, Wycliffe Gordon, Byron Stripling, Gerald Clayton, Obed Calvaire, René Marie and more. 

The DC Jazz Festival features two of our cruise hosts, Emmet Cohen and Marcus Miller, as well as one of the stars of Christian McBride’s World at Sea, Cécile McLorin Salvant, and The Detroit Jazz Festival showcases Herlin Riley, John Pizzarelli, Chucho Valdés and Paquito D’Rivera, and, once again, Emmet Cohen.

Jazz festivals on Labor Day seem to be a “thing.” Why not? It’s a unique American holiday, so featuring a unique American music genre makes sense. Throw in a good baseball game, the beginning of the second week of the US Open tennis, a family barbecue and the return to school and college, and you have the makings of all that America stands for. Recent Labor Day party crashers include the NCAA and NFL, both of which used to start after Labor Day. Granted, they are as American as the other events, but their encroachment seems unnecessary.

The team at Signature Cruise Experiences will be taking a breather this weekend in anticipation of our first fall cruise in 20 years, Journey of Jazz ’25, which sails from Vancouver to Los Angeles, starting on September 12. You can catch Marcus, Emmet, Chucho, Cécile, Wycliffe, John Clayton, Niki and others on that sailing. We assume that these folks are using these other festivals as a warm-up or sound check for the cruise. Just joking. None of them need that extra work to be amazing!

And, if you miss these musicians at either the festivals or on Journey of Jazz ’25, all of them reappear this winter on either Christian McBride’s World at Sea or The Jazz Cruise ’26. Our sandbox may not be large, but I love the folks who play there. Enjoy the holiday!

By Michael Lazaroff, Executive Director of The Jazz Cruise, The Smooth Jazz Cruise, Chris Botti at Sea, Christian McBride’s World at Sea, Journey of Jazz, David Foster: The Hitman Cruise and Top Shelf Country Cruise. Feel free to express your views or pose questions to him at michael@scecruises.com.

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The Smooth Jazz Cruise ‘27.1 & ‘27.2 Live Lineup Announcement

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Anthony Wilson’s House of the Singing Blossoms

Guitarist Anthony Wilson, who will be performing with Diana Krall on Journey of Jazz in a few weeks, has just released a new nonet album, House of the Singing Blossoms, performed live and recorded at Sam First Jazz Club in Los Angeles. The group includes pianist Gerald Clayton, trombonist Alan Ferber, tenor saxophonist Bob Reynolds, alto saxophonist Nicole McCabe, baritone saxophonist Henry Solomon, trumpeter and French horn player CJ Camerieri, bassist Anna Butterss and drummer Mark Ferber.  

“I’ve been feeling for quite some time that I wanted to revisit that instrumentation,” Wilson said about his fifth nonet album. “I’d heard people like B.B. King, or Clarence ‘Gatemouth’ Brown, T-Bone Walker, those kinds of guitarists centered in a group with a horn section and over a period of years it kind of opened up. I’ve learned to have less of a hold over what we were doing, turning it into the kind of ensemble that incorporated improvisation in a more open, natural way.”

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Signature Cruise Experiences Programs Stateroom Availability

’25 PROGRAMS

Journey of Jazz ’25 is Fully Reserved
 Journey of Jazz is fully reserved. A few staterooms are available due to guests forced to cancel their reservations. Call the office for cancelled stateroom pricing and availability. 

’26 PROGRAMS

’27 PROGRAMS