About
Mission
The mission of the Michigan Jazz Trail is to celebrate the rich heritage and many facets of jazz, and build a diverse statewide audience through education and entertainment.
Big Idea
Imagine, someday in the not-too-distant future, getting in a car and traveling to a series of interconnected jazz festivals up and down the coasts of .... Michigan.
From Traverse City ... to Bay City....to Detroit, and other points in between and beyond. National headliners sharing stages with regional jazz musicians as well as high school and college students. Venues outdoors and in historic theaters. Blues, Dixieland, soul mixed in. Workshops and after-hours jam sessions.
There is, of course, each fall’s massive Detroit International Jazz Festival. Also home to blues and jazz festivals are Alpena, Ann Arbor, Grand Rapids, Jackson, Kalamazoo, Lansing, Mackinac Island, Marshall and Petoskey.
And new on the scene this year is the Michigan Jazz Trail Festival, three concerts in three days in Saginaw, Midland and Bay City.
But there is little coordination and cross marketing between them -- such as exists with the Mississippi Blues Trail and the Bourbon Trail in Kentucky.
Enter Midlander Molly McFadden, who envisions the Michigan Jazz Trail Festival she founded partnering with all the others in the state and adopting the signature name Michigan Jazz Trail.
“We eventually want a continuous jazz circuit that winds through the state during the summer and ends on Labor Day in Detroit,” says McFadden.
“In addition to celebrating our musical heritage, the eventual all-encompassing Michigan Jazz Trail partnership will promote cultural tourism and economic development throughout the state.”
McFadden is a 2004 transplant from New York City, a jazz singer who sang and performed in cabarets. She and her husband own and operate Molly’s Bistro, which presents jazz music every weekend -- ranging from jazz trios, guitar soloists and jazz horns to the Harlem String Quartet.
