BERKS COUNTY, Pa. – Berks Jazz Fest is tuning up for its 35th year and it promises to be the biggest one yet.<\/p>\n
Organizers say this year, the festival will expand from ten days to six weeks.<\/p>\n
“If you talk to any of the artists, if any of you were here during the ten-day festival, they all say this is one of the greatest festivals ever, anywhere,” said Michael Tozzi, a radio entrepreneur.<\/p>\n
This year, organizers expanded the festival to stretch out over six weeks to include all of April, which is deemed “Jazz Appreciation Month.”<\/p>\n
They say they made the change for a number of reasons, including scheduling and efforts to accommodate performers.<\/p>\n
“Festival is going to start on March 19th here at the DoubleTree with the Berks Arts Awards night in the ballroom, and it’s going to end with Rick Braun’s concert at the Miller Center on April 30th,” said John Ernesto, an organizer from the start of Jazz Fest.<\/p>\n
Organizers say there are already 23 shows booked at 18 venues through April, including a barber shop concert in Port Clinton, Schuylkill County, to beat poetry and a Reading Pops Big Band performance.<\/p>\n
“This gives the fans an opportunity to experience live music in different ways but most important, it provides different performance opportunities for global, regional and national musicians,” said Ernesto.<\/p>\n
“The success and longevity of the fest are a result of unwavering support from local businesses, community, arts organizations and dedicated volunteers which are very, very, very important to us, sponsors and patrons,” Ernesto added.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"BERKS COUNTY, Pa. – Berks Jazz Fest is tuning up for its 35th year and it promises to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":87032,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[349,43450,38391,43449,28,128,130,129],"class_list":["post-87031","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-reading","tag-berks-county","tag-berks-jazz-fest","tag-doubletree","tag-john-ernesto","tag-pennsylvania","tag-reading-city","tag-reading-city-headlines","tag-reading-city-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87031","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=87031"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87031\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/87032"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=87031"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=87031"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=87031"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}