Pittsfield CityJazz Festival

Highlighta Include Count Basie Orchestra at the Colonlal

By: Ed Bride - Mar 18, 2025

You’ve come to expect the best of touring, local, and undiscovered talent from us, and this year will be no exception. Here is the lineup for the nineteenth Pittsfield CityJazz Festival, which runs from April 24 through May 4 in downtown Pittsfield, Massachusetts, the cultural capital of the Berkshires.

The first weekend is collectively known as “Jazz About Town,” and features local artists.

• It kicks-off on Thursday, April 24, with an open jam session at Dottie’s Coffee Lounge and restaurant. The jam session will have a house rhythm section, with rotating local artists, and is curated and refereed by pianist Dave Bartley.
• The festival’s annual Jazz Crawl follows on Friday, and features artists in restaurants and lounges throughout the City’s Upstreet Cultural District. The crawl concludes with a dance set at Wander Berkshires, the new event space at 34 Depot Street, a new cafe, with coffee, tea, kombucha on tap, and a wide selection of craft non-alcoholic cocktails, beer, wine, and BYOB.
• We have added a new event on Saturday, Apr. 25, “An Evening With Ben Kohn”. A legendary keyboard artist in the region, Benny will appear with his trio and special guests in a cabaret setting, also at Wander Berkshires (longtime followers of Berkshires Jazz may remember the venue as Baba Louie’s Backroom). 
•  A Sunday jazz brunch at Dottie’s on North Street caps the first weekend. All “Jazz About Town” events are free.

The Jazz Prodigy Concert kicks-off “headline week” on Wednesday, April 30 at the Berkshire Athenaeum. Introducing a young artist to Berkshires audiences, the concert features bassist Esteban Ruiz, a high school student who is a discovery from the Litchfield Jazz Camp. He will be backed by Ben Kohn on piano and Conor Meehan on drums. The Jazz Prodigy Concert takes place on International Jazz Day, a global celebration that is organized by UNESCO. A free event, it is sponsored by The Friends of the Athenaeum.

There are just two ticketed events, the headline concerts.

·        On Friday, May 2, the remarkable jazz and blues vocalist Dawning Holmes appears at the St. Germain Stage of Barrington Stage, with special guest Avery Sharpe on bass, along with trumpeter and Grammy-winning pianist Jeff Holmes.

·        And, as we noted above, on May 3, the last of the touring big bands from the jazz era, The Legendary Count Basie Orchestra, directed by Scotty Barnhart, holds sway at The Colonial Theatre. Vocalist Denise Thimes will be guest artist with the Basie ensemble. The Berkshires Jazz All Star Youth Ensemble will open for the Basie band.

Dottie’s closes-out the weekend with another of her popular jazz brunches on Sunday, May 4. Brunch from 10am-2pm, music until noon.

We will be updating our website with details, including the schedule for the jazz crawl, in coming days. Tell your friends, and keep up to date as well as connect to the box office for either event on our homepage [click here, or paste this URL into your browser: www.BerkshiresJazz.org].