Mardi Gras-style music. Blues. Modern dance. And jazz – lots and lots of jazz. Sure, you can buy all of it canned on iTunes or Netflix.
But do this instead: Get to the Five Points neighborhood Saturday. Watch musicians play all day. Dance in the sun. Eat some of the city’s best ice cream at Blackberries.
Whether Five Points, roughly Welton Street at 26th Street, is out your back door or 15 miles up Interstate 25, it’s a great way to spend a nice day in Denver.
And make sure you check out the tributes to people who played jazz over the years in the neighborhood. People including Ed Battle, a singer who moved to Denver in the 1970s and has been performing ever since. Louise Duncan, known as “Colorado’s First Lady of Jazz,” played with big names, including Duke Ellington, Ella Fitzgerald, and Billie Holiday, until she died in 1990. Native Denverite Brad Leali will be honored too; he played saxophone with such jazz greats as the Count Basie Orchestra and The Charles Mingus Big Band. Now he runs the jazz program at Texas Tech University.
And while you’re in the neighborhood, do pop into the Black American West Museum, 3091 California St. Admission will be free, and at noon you can catch a lecture on the history of jazz by Fred Hess, a musician and professor of jazz studies at Metropolitan State College of Denver. Stick around after he’s done to watch “Music Is My Life, Politics My Mistress: The Story of Oscar Brown Jr.,” a movie about the history of jazz music in historic Five Points.
The fun gets going about 11 a.m.; shows run 1-4 p.m. at venues along Welton. Details at denvergov.org.
– Douglas Brown, Denver Post staff writer
