An article in the Bellevue Reporter today speaks to the immense amount of live Jazz taking place in Downtown Bellevue recently. Vertigo Lounge and Grill has spearheaded the live Jazz club scene, by hosting 26 performances in the span of March and April. What is even better is that they don’t charge a cover fee!
In addition to Vertigo’s jazz offerings, the Bellevue Downtown Association is putting on the Bellevue Jazz Festival, which started on April 9th and runs through May 24th. The festival will offer some free performances and will be capped off by the headlining performance May 23th at Meydenbauer Center, by Branford Marsalis Quartet. Marsalis is a world-renowned, three-time Grammy winner! The Downtown Bellevue association is not new to jazz festivals. For 16 years, then concluding in 1993, the City of Bellevue hosted a jazz festival at Bellevue Community College. Now, 15 years later, they are back on the map hosting Grammy winners.
Seattle has dominated the jazz scene, playing host to jazz clubs such as Tula’s and Dimitriou’s Jazz Alley. Now, with a jazz scene in Bellevue, many of those traveling across the lake will be tempted to enjoy offerings on the Eastside.
A little birdie told me Lucky Strike will play home to live jazz every Friday night starting soon 🙂 (aka the jazz singer of this group is one of my coworkers!)
It’s the Bellevue Downtown Association (aka BDA), not Downtown Bellevue…
That’s all backwards to me…