Stanford Jazz Festival goes global

Since 1972, Stanford has celebrated the most American of art forms – now it looks to jazz's African forebears and its cousins in Brazil, Europe and around the world.

America's most undisputed legacy to world arts is jazz.

So it's fitting that Stanford University celebrates it – every year – with a world-class jazz festival. But though jazz was born in America, its forebears and cousins also will have a share in this year's Stanford Jazz Festival, which begins its 39th six-week season on Friday, June 25, and continues through Aug. 7.

The festival kicks off at 8 p.m. Friday in Dinkelspiel Auditorium with an event that has a distinctly international feel: "A Night of Brazilian Jazz" with Grammy Award-winning vocalist Luciana Souza, guitarist Romero Lubambo and saxophonist Harvey Wainapel and his all-Brazilian jazz quartet Alegritude.

"Most people think that jazz began in New Orleans – but, no, this music began thousands of years ago," says the 84-year-old National Endowment for the Arts master Randy Weston, a Moroccan-based American jazz pianist and composer of Jamaican parentage. The festival will honor jazz's African roots with...

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