Arts Montco Week & JazzFest is Back!
This fall, Montgomery County will see a return of the third annual Arts Montco Week! Starting September 20th and running until October 1st, celebrate and support Montgomery County’s 200+ arts, culture, and entertainment venues. Live music venues, playhouses, historic theaters, museums, art galleries, gardens, and arboretums will be showcased in this weeklong event.
In addition to Arts Week, Montgomery County’s second annual Montco Jazz Fest is also taking place this fall! This year’s focus is on Women in Jazz, showcasing the wonderful and talented female jazz musicians in the county.
Montco is thrilled to welcome international recording and touring artist Joanna Pascale as this year’s festival curator for Montco Jazz Week. She’s helping us shape a momentous celebration with this year’s spotlight on Women in Jazz. Jazzfest is a weeklong celebration taking place in venues all over the county.
Lyric is paramount for internationally touring vocalist Joanna Pascale, who insists that she cannot perform a song unless she can connect personally with its lyrics. Once she’s found that connection, there’s no one who can better convey the emotion of those words more directly and intimately than Pascale.
A singer of sophisticated taste, profound expressiveness, and raw emotion, Pascale is also a gifted educator who is a member of the vocal faculty at the University of Pennsylvania.
She’s been featured on recordings by Jeremy Pelt, Tim Warfield, Orrin Evans, Larry McKenna, the Temple University Jazz Band, and many more.
Pascale made her recording debut with 2004’s When Lights Are Low, followed by the 2008 Through My Eyes, a 2010 duo recording with pianist Anthony Wonsey and a 2015 release, Wildflower where she’s joined by an all-star ensemble including pianists Orrin Evans and Cyrus Chestnut, harmonica master Gregoire Maret, bassist Christian McBride, and neo-soul singer Bilal, all released on her Stiletto Records label.
In 2017 she was Artist-in-residence at the Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts in collaboration with 2015 Guggenheim Fellow, Etienne Charles and director Ellie Heyman to create a song-cycle inspired by flowers.
