Blue Note At Sea 2019

Entertainment Cruise Productions has organized various music cruises since 2001, such as The Jazz Cruise, The Smooth Jazz Cruise, or The Playboy Jazz Cruise. The next Jazz Cruise starts on January 26th in Fort Lauderdale, Florida for a 7-day trip with stops in Nassau, The Bahamas, Cozumel and Costa Maya in Mexico, and Key West in Florida. The line-up is a joint effort of Blue Note president Don Was and Blue Note Jazz Clubs president Steven Bensusan and once again has a lot of top-notch artists, and not only those of the Blue Note label, on offer.

Marcus Miller, Robert Glasper, David Sanborn, Cécile McLorin Salvant, Logan Richardson, Luques Curtis, Wynton Marsalis, Kurt Elling, José James, Christian Scott, Terence Blanchard, Jason Moran, Kandace Springs, Wycliffe Gordon, Eric Marienthal, Ben Williams, Taylor McFerrin, Terrace Martin, Derrick Hodge, Geoffrey Keezer, and many more will be on board. The programme is supposed to cater for an audience who love their jazz to be not too introverted, rather cool and hip than inaccessible and overly indulgent, according to the programme notes. As a matter of fact, the line-up actually looks like one of the more fashionable jazz festival rosters with many of the artists having performed throughout the year in various locations in Europe, too. There will be various venues of different size with main shows played twice nightly in the ship’s largest venue.

The most recent add to the line-up is Kathy Kosins, the Detroit-born singer who seems to be just the perfect fit since her album “Uncovered Soul” is a wonderful mix of jazz and soul, see Gina’s five-paw review here. In the meantime, she has released several tracks from the album in different mixes plus a couple of tunes not on the album, such as a remake of the Donald Byrd classic “Fancy Free” from the trumpeter’s 1969 Blue Note album of the same name. The tune features Singer Daymé Arocena, flutist Hubert Laws, and lyrics from Paul Randolph. And Kathy started out her career singing backgrounds on albums by the group Was (Not Was) which featured Don Was, now the president of Blue Note. So there you go; somehow everything is connected and goes round in circles.

For more info on the cruise, visit http://www.bluenoteatsea.com/