Sisters Jazz Festival offers rollicking music

The 2005 Sisters Jazz Festival will roll into town this weekend with performances by a wide variety of bands at venues all around town.

This year’s show will have a special significance as Sisters celebrates a style of music that evolved — you might even say erupted — out of New Orleans at the turn of the 20th Century.

The Festival begins September 16 and runs through the afternoon of September 18. There are four different venues offering live music at the same time. Shuttle service will be offered.

The Sisters Jazz Festival features a variety of Traditional, Swing, South Louisiana Cajun and Zydeco, New Orleans Style and Barrelhouse Jazz.

There’s a style for every jazz-loving fan.

Popular returning bands this year are Cornet Chop Suey, Titan Hot Seven, High Street, Gator Beat, Club 7 and Michelle VanHandel.

Gator Beat is continuing its tradition of dazzling crowds with its danceable zydeco music even as the band and fans mourn the loss of founder Riche Domingue, who died earlier this year.

New this year will be High Sierra, DK Stewart, Cami & the Cosmopolitans, Jesse Moore — “The Hoodoo Man” and BendBrassBand and special guest and solo artist Brady McKay.

The New Orleans connection is especially strong with Jesse Moore. His band is headquartered in New Orleans and members were scattered across the map by Hurricane Katrina. They will be reunited for the first time since the disaster at the Sisters Jazz Festival.

Moore, whose career has taken him around the world, blends deep blues, roots rock, funk and Caribbean soul into a powerful gumbo that moves the heart and the feet.

Again this year the festival will feature the popular “Three on One” Piano Set featuring jazz pianists Randy Morris Jim Martinez and Andy Armer.

Tickets can be purchased from the Web site at http://www.sistersjazzfestival.com, via phone at 800-549-1332, at Paulina Springs Books in Sisters, Boomtown Records in Bend, or at the festival on any day. Multi-day and single day tickets are available.

Visit http://www.sistersjazzfestival.com for more information.