This weekend, jazz music will dominate the streets of Downtown Jacksonville at the city\u2019s annual Jazz Festival.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a part of our fabric,\u201d Alex Alston, Executive Director of the City of Jacksonville\u2019s Office of Sports and Entertainment, said. \u201cIt\u2019s been going on over 40 years, it\u2019s an iconic tradition.\u201d<\/p>\n
>>> STREAM ACTION NEWS JAX LIVE <<<<\/a><\/p>\n The annual music staple features some of the nation\u2019s top jazz artists all for free. This year, acts include Parliament Funkadelic performing Friday night; Sheila E. & The E-Train on Saturday and Nile Rodgers and CHIC on Sunday.<\/p>\n Action News Jax\u2019s Ka\u2019Jeza Hawkins will be the emcee for Friday night and Yona Gavino will emcee on Saturday.<\/p>\n The main stage is at Ford on Bay but this year you can walk down the Riverwalk to Riverfront Plaza and check out a second stage called Jazz in the Plaza.<\/p>\n RELATED: The 2026 Jacksonville Jazz Festival returns over Memorial Day weekend<\/a><\/p>\n \u201cAt our new Riverfront Plaza, we\u2019ve got a Jazz in the Plaza event going on, which is going to feature local regional acts,\u201d Alston said.<\/p>\n Also new this year, people are allowed to bring a smaller cooler with food inside festival grounds.<\/p>\n \u201cThe main reason we\u2019re allowing food in is because with our Ford on Bay location, being a great riverfront location, is slightly smaller than we\u2019ve had in the past,\u201d said Alston. \u201cIn order to maximize the number of people that could get in, we have less food trucks.\u201d<\/p>\n [DOWNLOAD: Free Action News Jax app for alerts as news breaks<\/a>]<\/p>\n As for parking, Alston urges people to arrive early.<\/p>\n \u201cTraditionally we have over the course of the weekend we have about 25,000 to 35,000 (people),\u201d Alston said. \u201cWe\u2019ve also secured a number of parking garages that are located all throughout downtown.\u201d<\/p>\n Alston encourages people to come check out the festival this weekend.<\/p>\n [SIGN UP: Action News Jax Daily Headlines Newsletter<\/a>] <\/p>\n \u201cWhether you love jazz, love music, love events, just come and have a good time,\u201d Alston said.<\/p>\n Alston said in the future, they hope to have the festival at Metropolitan Park once renovations are complete.<\/p>\n The festival wraps up on Sunday. For more information about the Jazz Festival, click here<\/a>.<\/p>\n Click here<\/a> to download the free Action News Jax news and weather apps, click here<\/a> to download the Action News Jax Now app for your smart TV and click here<\/a> to stream Action News Jax live.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This weekend, jazz music will dominate the streets of Downtown Jacksonville at the city\u2019s annual Jazz Festival. \u201cIt\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":242601,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[1913,119416,119835,9024,9000,116,118,117,119836,13871,16629],"class_list":["post-281267","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-jacksonville","tag-action-news","tag-alex-alston","tag-annual-jazz-festival","tag-city-of-jacksonville","tag-downtown-jacksonville","tag-jacksonville","tag-jacksonville-headlines","tag-jacksonville-news","tag-jazz-festival","tag-jazz-music","tag-riverfront-plaza"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/281267","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=281267"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/281267\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/242601"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=281267"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=281267"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=281267"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}