The Fifth Annual Hot Jazz Festival (@ The McKittrick Hotel) - New York City Article

Even at the first Hot Jazz Festival, way back in 2013, it was immediately clear that this not-yet-annual celebration was going to be one of the big events of the year, and something to look forward to. Every year since then, festival founder and producer Michael Katsobashvili has proved over and over that the hottest thing in jazz isn’t necessarily the newest, but, more often than you’d be expect, the genre of the music that most appeals to new generations, both as listeners (and dancers!) and creators, are the exuberant sounds that flourished in New Orleans, Chicago, and Harlem up through the 1920s and 1930s and earlier. For this edition, some of the mainstays are back, and they’ve grown in stature since the festival started - especially cofounder Bria Skonberg and the Hot Sardines, who are now signed to Sony and Universal Music, respectively. In addition to exuberant mainstays like the Grand Street Stompers, trumpeter Jon-Erik Kellso’s EarRegulars, clarinet Dennis Lichtman with Mona’s Hot Four, there are welcome newcomers like Felix Peikli, Joe Doubleday's Showtime Band with Kat Edmonson, and the brilliant french songstress Cyrille Aimee teaming with her countryman and modern day Djangologist, Stephane Wrembel. The varieties of this music are endless: I’m especially looking forward to shows celebrating unusual instruments: not only hot violin (with both Aaron Weinstein, Andy Stein), but jazz washboard (a French speciality, it turns out) and jazz theremin (masterminded by that multi-instrumental mad genius, Scott Robinson) and tributes to deserving jazz age giants like Joe Venuti, Eddie Lang, and Annette Hanshaw (the latter by that overwhelmingly unique song stylist Tamar Korn).