The New Jersey Performing Arts Center (NJPAC) welcomes the 11th Annual TD James Moody Jazz Festival Nov. 8 – 20, 2022. This year’s program offers events combining jazz luminaries with artists known for R&B, poetry, hip hop, tap, and so much more.

Performers include Chuck D (Public Enemy), Rakim (Paid in Full), and Speech (Arrested Development), poets and spoken word artists Nikki Giovanni, Jessica Care Moore, Newark Mayor Ras Baraka, and The Last Poets, musicians bassist Christian McBride, saxophonist Javon Jackson, trumpeter John Faddis, and the Maria Schneider Orchestra, singers Fantasia and Jazzmeia Horn, and a joint performance by vocalist Dee Dee Bridgewater and tap artist Savion Glover.

Also featured are the future of jazz — young poets from NJPAC’s City Verses program, the New Jersey Music Educators Association (NJMEA) All-State Jazz Band and NJMEA All-State Jazz Choir, and competitors in the Sarah Vaughan International Vocal Competition.

The festival’s namesake, James Moody, was a legendary saxophonist and flutist who was born in Savannah, Georgia, but raised in Newark.

“Jazz is the purest form of expression for an African American musician,” says McBride, NJPAC’s jazz advisor and the festival’s musical director. “The purest thing you can do inside of your culture is to be a jazz musician. With all the educational outreach that has been happening at NJPAC, that legacy is not just being preserved but built upon.”