This fall 2025, JazzFest White Plains returns for its 14th year with more energy and excitement than ever. The 5-day festival presents 18 live performances taking place across downtown White Plains – from emerging talent to world-renowned artists, including seven GRAMMY Award winners and nominees.
Presented by Montefiore Einstein.
JazzFest White Plains 5-day Lineup
Wednesday, September 10
Craig Taborn
12-1:15pm | FREE
Downtown Music at Grace (33 Church St.)
Celebrated for his visionary improvisations bordering on jazz and contemporary classical music, and hailed by The New York Times as “one of the best jazz pianists alive,” Craig Taborn makes his White Plains debut in this fully improvised solo piano concert. Taborn has played and recorded with countless luminaries in the fields of jazz, improvised music, new music and electronic music including Roscoe Mitchell, Wadada Leo Smith, Dave Holland, John Zorn, Chris Potter, Vijay Iyer, Kris Davis and many others.
Sherry Winston
12:30-1:30pm | FREE
White Plains Farmers Market (59 Court St.)
Multiple GRAMMY Award-nominee, educator and performer Sherry Winston is one of modern jazz flute’s greatest innovators. She has performed alongside artists and producers like Najee, Roberta Flack, Grover Washington, Jr. and Quincy Jones. She has also graced major stages across the U.S., including Carnegie Hall, Constitution Hall, Lincoln Center and the Kennedy Center, among others.
Wycliffe Gordon Quintet
Including dinner served by Via Garibaldi
White Plains Plaza (1 North Broadway)
6:30pm
Dinner and performance: $75 per person | Cash Bar
price includes reception, performance, tax and gratuity
Wycliffe Gordon is an award-winning trombonist, composer and educator known for his dynamic sound and deep roots in jazz. A former member of the Wynton Marsalis Septet, he continues to inspire audiences worldwide.
Join us for a one-of-a-kind concert reception. Advanced ticket purchase includes:
- Live performance
- 3-course family-style dinner (inclusive of tax and gratuity)
- Prime seating on the Plaza
This performance will take place outdoors with advanced ticket purchase required for prime viewing. Non-ticket holders are welcome to enjoy the performance on the Plaza, but must bring their own chairs. In the event of rain, this event will be moved indoors.
Thursday, September 11
Jazz Stroll
Join us for Jazz Stroll throughout a variety of local restaurants in Downtown White Plains.
The Juliet Set feat. Juliet Ewing
5:30pm | FREE
Shiraz Kitchen and Wine Bar (80 Mamaroneck Ave.)
Juliet Ewing is a former Broadway actress and celebrated jazz vocalist known for her ability to seamlessly blend the worlds of jazz and cabaret with a rare finesse. Her forthcoming album, which features arrangements of all Gershwin tunes, will be released in September 2025.
Pablo Mayor Trio
6:45pm | FREE
Chazz Palminteri Italian Restaurant (264 Main St.)
This special trio brings together jazz pianist Pablo Mayor’s in-depth study of the rhythms of the Caribbean and the music of his native country, Colombia. The core of the ensemble features the long-standing rhythm section from the renowned Folklore Urbano Orchestra: Franco Pinna on drums and Dave Hertzberg on bass.
Jazz & Poetry Choir Collective
8-9pm | $10
ArtsWestchester (31 Mamaroneck Ave.)
The Jazz & Poetry Choir Collective (J&PCC) will share original pieces and pay homage to artists who are known for working across poetry and jazz improvisation. J&PCC members bring experience, narrative and playfulness to the stage, taking the art of spoken word jazz to a new level. The performance will feature Westchester County Poet Laureate Phylisha Villanueva.
Friday, September 12
Jazz at Noon: Laura Anglade
12pm | FREE
White Plains Public Library (100 Martine Ave.)
Laura Anglade, known for her pure tone and emotional depth, draws inspiration from jazz legends like Sarah Vaughan and Barbra Streisand while maintaining her own style. Anglade has earned widespread acclaim with performances at iconic venues like Paris’s Olympia and NYC’s Town Hall, and a Juno-nominated album, Venez Donc Chez Moi.
Kurt Elling’s Wildflowers
featuring Joey Calderazzo
7pm (doors 6:30pm) & 9pm (doors 8:30pm)
General seating: $55 (7pm or 9pm) / $100 (both sets)
ArtsWestchester (31 Mamaroneck Ave.)
Renowned for his singular combination of robust swing and poetic insight, two-time GRAMMY Award-winner and fifteen-time GRAMMY nominee Kurt Elling has secured his place among the world’s foremost jazz vocalists. The New York Times called Elling “the standout male jazz vocalist of our time.” The Guardian (UK) pronounced him “a kind of Sinatra with superpowers.” Over a twenty-five-year career of touring and recording, Elling has won three Prix du Jazz Vocal (France), two German Echo Awards, and two Dutch Edison Awards. He has had a 14-year run atop the DownBeat Critics and Readers polls, and has won twelve Jazz Journalists awards for “Male Vocalist of the Year.”
For this very special duo performance, Elling will be accompanied by GRAMMY Award-winning pianist Joey Calderazzo, one of the finest players of his generation. Having recorded thirteen albums as a leader, Calderazzo has traveled the road from child prodigy to in-demand session musician to elite member of the finest ensembles in jazz. Along the way, he has accompanied jazz greats, including Branford Marsalis, Jack DeJohnette and Dave Holland.
Saturday, September 13
The MCW Jazz Faculty Ensemble
Jazz Jam with MCW Faculty
12-1pm | FREE (donations welcome)
Music Conservatory of Westchester (216 Central Ave.)
The Music Conservatory of Westchester (MCW) Faculty Jazz Ensemble presents Modern Standards, a concert that features original arrangements of popular hit songs from yesterday and today. The music, representing the ingenuity of jazz interpretation, will feature MCW’s world-class faculty and take place in the Conservatory’s Recital Hall. It will also be streamed live online.
A jam session will immediately follow the concert program. This session is open to all ages and levels of experience and will be facilitated by MCW faculty.
Immanuel Wilkins Quartet
3pm (doors 2:30pm) | $30
ArtsWestchester (31 Mamaroneck Ave.)
GRAMMY-Award-nominated alto saxophonist and composer Immanuel Wilkins is one of the vital voices of jazz in the 21st century. Wilkins, a native of Pennsylvania, moved to New York in 2015 for studies at the Juilliard School, and has since worked with a wide range of artists, including Wynton Marsalis, Joel Ross, Solange, Gerald Clayton, Kenny Barron and many others. His Blue Note debut, Omega, took the number-one spot on The New York Times’s list of Best Jazz Albums of 2020. In 2023, Wilkins was ranked number one in the Downbeat Critics Poll in three categories: Alto Saxophonist, Rising Star Composer, and Rising Star Group.
Bertha Hope
with special guest vocalist Joe Boykin
5-6:15pm | FREE
Freebird Kitchen & Bar (161 Mamaroneck Ave.)
Pianist Bertha Hope, one of jazz’s living legends, has toured globally with artists like Nat Adderley, Dizzy Gillespie and Eddie Henderson while being a respected educator and bandleader in her own right. She is a recipient of the National Jazz Museum in Harlem’s Legends of Jazz award (2018), the Jazz Foundation of America’s Lifetime Achievement award (2024), and was recently named a Jazz Legacies Fellow by the Mellon Foundation (2025). She will be joined by guest vocalist and local favorite, Joe Boykin.
Kenny Barron Trio
General seating: $55 (7pm or 9pm) // $100: both sets
ArtsWestchester (31 Mamaroneck Ave.)
Honored by The National Endowment for the Arts as a Jazz Master, Kenny Barron has an unmatched ability to mesmerize audiences with his elegant playing, sensitive melodies and infectious rhythms. The Los Angeles Times named him “one of the top jazz pianists in the world” and Jazz Weekly called him “the most lyrical piano player of our time.”
As a high school student in Philadelphia, Barron worked with drummer Philly Joe Jones and the Mel Melvin Orchestra. At 19, he relocated to New York City, where he began working with Roy Haynes, James Moody and Lee Morgan. Later in his career, he went on to work with jazz greats Dizzy Gillespie, Freddie Hubbard, Stan Getz, and countless others. Barron has released more than 40 albums under his name, and appears as a sideman on more than 100 records. He is a fourteen-time GRAMMY Award-nominee and seven-time recipient of Best Pianist by the Jazz Journalists Association.
Sunday, September 14
Sunday Jazz Alfresco
12:30-7:30pm | FREE | Rain or Shine!
(Mamaroneck Ave. between Main St. and Martine Ave.)
Westchester Center for Jazz & Contemporary Music
12:30-1:15pm
The Westchester Center for Jazz & Contemporary Music provides opportunities for musicians of diverse backgrounds, abilities and ages to develop their skills in jazz and other related musical forms. This performance features a selection of the Center’s top student musicians and faculty.
April May Webb with the Sounds of A&R
1:45-2:45pm
The Billboard-charting artist Sounds of A&R, aka S.O.A.R., is the brainchild of vocalist April May Webb, winner of the 2024 Sarah Vaughan International Jazz Vocal Competition, and trumpeter Randall Haywood, voted Male Rising Star at Hot House Jazz Magazine and Jazzmobile’s NYC Reader’s Jazz Award. Sounds of A&R, awarded and named “Best Group” at the Reader’s Jazz Awards, effortlessly weaves elements of swing, cool, hard bop and avant-garde, paying tribute to the jazz greats while boldly embracing the future with fresh, innovative arrangements and compositions.
Pete Malinverni & His Invincible Cities Quintet
3:15-4:15pm
Pianist, composer, educator Pete Malinverni has been a fixture on the New York City Jazz scene since moving here in the early 1980s from his hometown of Niagara Falls, NY, where he’d begun Classical Piano studies at the tender age of six. Since moving to NYC, Pete has recorded sixteen times as a leader, and established himself as a performing, recording and inspirational contact with a host of masters on the scene including Joe Lovano, Vernel Fournier, Charles Davis, Mel Lewis, Dennis Irwin, Karrin Allyson, Steve Wilson and many others. He currently serves as Chair of Jazz Studies at the Conservatory of Music at Purchase College.
Chembo Corniel Quintet
4:45-5:45pm
Wilson “Chembo” Corniel, Jr. was raised in the humble streets of Red Hook, Brooklyn by proud Puerto Rican parents. It was during these years, that he had the privilege to study with percussion luminaries Tommy Lopez Sr., “Little Ray” Romero, Louie Bauza, and Cachete Maldonado. Later he honed his skills at The Harbor Conservatory for the Performing Arts and at the prestigious La Escuela Nacional de Arte in Havana, Cuba under the direction of the great Chucho Valdés. Today, he is considered as one of the best hard-hitting, versatile percussionists around. Chembo teaches percussion to students at the Conservatory of Music at Purchase College and leads numerous clinics throughout the U.S. where he brings awareness to others of the rich Afro-Caribbean traditions.
Steve Turre Sextet
6:15-7:15pm
Trombonist and seashellist Steve Turre, one of the world’s preeminent jazz innovators, has consistently won Readers’ and Critics’ polls in JazzTimes, Downbeat, and Jazziz for Best Trombone and for Best Miscellaneous Instrumentalist (shells). Turre was born to Mexican-American parents and grew up in the San Francisco Bay area, where he absorbed daily doses of mariachi, blues and jazz. In 1972, his career picked up momentum when Ray Charles hired him to go on tour. A year later, Turre’s mentor Woody Shaw would bring him into Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers. He has worked with a diverse list of musicians from the jazz, Latin and pop worlds, including Dizzy Gillespie, McCoy Tyner, J.J. Johnson, Herbie Hancock, Tito Puente, Mongo Santamaria, Van Morrison, Pharoah Sanders, Horace Silver and Max Roach, as well as Rahsaan Roland Kirk, who introduced him to the seashell as an instrument. Since then, Turre has incorporated seashells into his diverse musical style. He has a strong command of all musical genres and, when it comes to his distinct brand of jazz, he always keeps one foot in the past and one in the future.
Visit ArtsWestchester for more information.
