BRIC JazzFest to Return With a Marathon and Maceo Parker

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BRIC is best known for its Celebrate Brooklyn! Festival, a summer concert series in Prospect Park. But this October, for the third year in a row, the organization will also present the BRIC JazzFest, featuring a range of education and audience-engagement events as well as a three-day concert marathon.

Running from Oct. 14-21, the festival lineup is top-heavy with internationally renowned talent, including the pianist Vijay Iyer, the Sun Ra Arkestra under the direction of Marshall Allen, the drummer Terri Lyne Carrington and the funk pioneer and saxophonist Maceo Parker, who will close the festival.

But the bulk of its 27 acts are rising musicians, many based in New York: the alto saxophonist and mixed-media artist Matana Roberts; the pianist Samora Pinderhughes; and the trumpeter Theo Croker with his band Escape Velocity, for instance.

“Brooklyn is alive with so much music, and so much of it is being performed by young artists,” said Jack Walsh, vice president of performing arts at BRIC. “We’re focused on bringing in young artists that are not always playing in jazz clubs, but are playing wherever they can: D.I.Y. spaces, festivals, bars. Bringing them in under the banner of a jazz festival is a little different.”

In this way, the BRIC JazzFest can be seen as a smaller — and less cramped — preview of Winter JazzFest, a shrewdly programmed club crawl that happens each January in Manhattan. (The curator Brice Rosenbloom helps book both festivals.)

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