From the intimacy of Beebe’s on the Square and a night at the Statler to the stage at Kleinhans Music Hall, fall brings a different rhythm to JazzBuffalo.
Fall changes the way we experience jazz in Buffalo.
So much of our summer was spent outside—on Ellicott Street, the Tappo Rooftop, and festival stages. There was something special about watching people outside having fun.
Now the music moves inside, and with that comes a different kind of experience.
Over the next few months, JazzBuffalo will take us into three very different Buffalo spaces: surrounded by art at the Hunt Art Gallery and Beebe’s on the Square, into the historic Art Deco-inspired Rendezvous Room at the Statler, and into one of Buffalo’s, and the country’s, great concert halls at Kleinhans Music Hall.
What I like about this fall is that none of those experiences are trying to be the same thing.
That’s really what Fall with JazzBuffalo is about.
Getting Close to the Music at Art Meets Jazz
One of the things we’ve learned from Art Meets Jazz is how much the room matters.
At the Beebe’s on the Square, you’re not sitting a hundred feet from a stage. The musicians might be only a few feet away. You’re surrounded by artwork. People arrive, have something to eat or a glass of wine, talk for a while, and then the room gradually turns its attention toward the music.
It doesn’t really feel like going to a concert. It feels more like being part of an evening where art and music happen to meet.
We return September 23 with guitarist Rick Strauss, along with Lisa Hasselback and Ed Croft. It’s an especially good time to celebrate Rick, with his induction into the Buffalo Music Hall of Fame coming in October.
Then we’ll hear one of Buffalo’s emerging young jazz voices, Elena Izquierdo, on October 21. Victrola Voilà brings a completely different sound in November, followed in December by the Ed Croft Trio and the music of Vince Guaraldi’s A Charlie Brown Christmas.
Four evenings, and I don’t think any two of them will feel quite the same.
That’s part of what we’ve come to like about Art Meets Jazz.
Two Nights at The Jazz Lounge
The Jazz Lounge is different again.
When we started these evenings at the Statler, the idea wasn’t simply to put musicians in another room. We wanted to bring back some of the social experience that has always surrounded jazz—the idea of going out for the evening, meeting friends, having a cocktail, listening to great songs, and enjoying the room as much as the performance.
So we’re keeping The Jazz Lounge simple this fall with two nights that fit that idea especially well.
On October 29, Sinatra in the Lounge brings Zach Carr together with The JazzBuffalo Orchestra, with arrangements and musical direction by John Hasselback III.
Sinatra gives us a lot to work with. The songs, certainly. But also the swing, the style, and that feeling that the music and the night out belong together.
Then on December 17, Vanessa Vacanti brings us A Great American Christmas Songbook. Holiday songs, the Great American Songbook, cocktails, and room to dance in the Rendezvous Room. It should be a very different kind of Christmas jazz evening from what we’ll experience elsewhere in December.
And I think two Jazz Lounge evenings this fall feel right.
They’re not meant to be interchangeable dates on a calendar. Each should feel like a night you decided to go out for.
And Then There Is Kleinhans
Jazz at Kleinhans occupies a different place for us.
There is something about walking into Kleinhans Music Hall and hearing jazz in the Mary Seaton Room. The scale changes. So does the expectation.
On November 8, we open the 2026–2027 Jazz at Kleinhans season with Nicole Zuraitis.
Some people in Buffalo already know Nicole’s music. Many probably don’t yet. That’s one of the reasons I’m particularly looking forward to this concert.
Nicole is a two-time Grammy Award winner, but the awards tell only part of the story. She’s a vocalist, pianist, songwriter, and arranger. She can inhabit the Great American Songbook and then turn around and write music of her own that belongs in the conversation about what the Songbook can become. Her newest project, The Devil I Knew, is an ambitious 20-track work, and this summer NPR’s Jazz Night in America devoted an episode to Nicole and her music.
She’s the kind of artist I want people in Buffalo to have the opportunity to discover.
Then, on December 6, we return for Swinging in the Holidays, with Champian Fulton, Carmen Bradford, and Vanessa Perea. It’s an afternoon built around swing, song, and the kind of holiday music that seems especially at home in Kleinhans.
And those two concerts are only the beginning. Jazz at Kleinhans continues in 2027 with Ann Hampton Callaway celebrating Buffalo’s own Harold Arlen, Alfredo Rodríguez, and then the Branford Marsalis Quartet with Dianne Reeves.
There is a season taking shape there, and I hope more people begin to think of Jazz at Kleinhans that way.
Finding Your Way Into the Fall
When I look at all of this together, what interests me isn’t really the number of events. It’s the choices.
One night you can be sitting a few feet from the musicians surrounded by artwork. Another night you can be at the Statler listening to Sinatra with a jazz orchestra. And another afternoon you can walk into Kleinhans and discover an artist like Nicole Zuraitis.
Those are very different experiences.
We know people aren’t going to come to everything. Nor should that be the expectation. People have busy lives, plenty of choices, and only so many evenings they can spend going out.
What I hope is that somewhere in this fall season, you see something and think, That’s the one I’d like to experience. And this one as well!
That’s what Fall with JazzBuffalo means to me.
Different spaces. Different experiences. And plenty of reasons to spend some time together around the jazz and the Great American Songbook this fall.
