2023 TD Halifax Jazz Festival Presents Digable Planets with Maestro Fresh Wes
Saturday, July 15, 2023
19+ ID Required** / General admission standing / No refunds or exchanges / Rain or shine/ Seating Limited Not guaranteed No professional cameras or audio/video recording devices allowed
Digable Planets
Digable Planets burst onto the music scene in 1993 with their Grammy-winning single, “Rebirth Of Slick (Cool Like Dat)”. Made up of Ishmael Butler (“Butterfly”), Craig Irving (“Doodlebug”) and Mary Ann Vieira (“Ladybug Mecca”), the trio carved out a unique style of jazz-informed Hip Hop. Shortly after, Digable Planets followed up with their debut album, Reachin’ (A New Refutation of Time And Space), an ambitious offering that Pitchfork praised as “a world within a world, complete with its own language and monuments.” The group celebrates the 30th Anniversary of Reachin’ in 2023.
Melding Jazz samples, and complex rhymes that touched on everything from the nuances of city life (Where I’m From) to abortion rights (La Femme Fetal), Reachin’ was a rich and vibrant artistic statement as well as a huge commercial success (RIAA certified gold).
Digable Planets immediately followed up with Blowout Comb, a bold and colorful meditation on Black liberation. While the album did not initially reach the immediate commercial successes of Reachin’, the album has aged beautifully, influencing future generations of Hip Hop heads, young Jazz musicians and Afrofuturists. The trio spent the 2000s establishing their own individual creative voices with Butler’s Cherrywine and Shabazz Palaces projects, Mecca’s work with BROOKZILL! and Irving as “Cee Knowledge” leading Cee Knowledge & The Cosmic Funk Orchestra.
In 2015, the group embarked upon a string of wildly successful live shows and has been very active as a tight touring unit ever since. In 2017, they released Digable Planets Live, a live album that showcases many gems from the group’s catalog as well as the trio’s skill at rocking the crowd with a live band. A pioneering act that continues to cast a wide-ranging, genre-bending influence, Digable Planets have left an indelible mark on music. More than 30 years after their debut, their music still shines, and the iconic group continues to bring their celebrated stage show to excited crowds around the world.
Maestro Fresh Wes
Wes Williams aka Maestro Fresh Wes is the first Black Canadian artist to have a single or album reach gold and platinum status in Canada . This Toronto born multimedia celebrity, is the first Hiphop artist to receive a Juno Award for Best Rap Recording of the Year, the first to have a single on Billboard, as well as the first to be inducted into the Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame . The success of Wes’s 1989 debut single Let Your Backbone Slide , and his debut album Symphony In Effect, helped shape the Canadian music industry and reinforced him to being labeled The Godfather of Canadian Hiphop.
Throughout the past 40 years , Wes has evolved professionally from performing on local college radio, to making groundbreaking music and hitting national as well as international stages. As an actor he has appeared in several films and has worked alongside Mekhi Phifer, Omar Epps as well as Oscar Award winner Jamie Foxx. In Canadian television, Wes completed 8 seasons as a supporting character on CBC’s hit sitcom Mr. D.
The foreword for Wes’s awarded winning self-help book STICK TO YOUR VISION was written by Chuck D of the legendary Public Enemy. The foreword of Wes’s children’s book YOUNG MAESTRO GOES TO SCHOOL , was written by the legendary Kardinal Offishall and inspired two Juno Award nominated albums in the category of Children’s Album of the Year. Currently Wes is the host on CBC’s hit summer television series RACE AGAINST THE TIDE Season 3, his cooking show which he co-produced, MAESTRO CHEF WES is the second most watched show on the Bell Fibe1 Network, and his brand new single STILL WINNING is scheduled to release at the end of June 2023.
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19 + for all evening shows in the festival's TD Main Stage located on the Halifax waterfront (ID required).
**If you are under 19 you need to be accompanied by a parent or legal guardian (you will be asked to show ID) and they will be required to be onsite with you and be responsible for your supervision at the festival's TD Main Stage on the Halifax waterfront. This is because of the festival's license to sell alcohol. If the concert is designated 19+ and not at the TD Main Stage, then you are not able to attend.
Subject to capacity, children under 10 may accompany ticket-holding parents or legal guardians free of charge.
All tickets are final sale and cannot be exchanged or refunded. In the case of an event cancellation without a rescheduled date, a full refund will be automatically issued to each patron on the credit card used to purchase. By purchasing a ticket to this event, you agree to this purchase policy. Before purchasing your tickets, we urge you to confirm the title, time and location of the event.
For evening shows the TD Main Stage is general admission standing only. It is an open-air venue and all concerts are rain or shine. No cash or credit refunds.
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Please be assured that the health and safety of our community, including artists, patrons, volunteers, staff and other stakeholders, is of the utmost importance to us. Throughout this pandemic we have taken a “best practices” approach, planning, implementing and enforcing health and safety measures that meet or exceed public health directives and social gathering guidelines and risk mitigation strategies established by public health authorities and responsible event organizers. We believe this is the best way to keep our festival and events safe and to protect the health and safety of those who create and attend them.
We have compiled some frequently asked questions and some useful information on our FAQ page. http://www.halifaxjazzfestival.ca/faq If you have any questions that haven’t been addressed there, please send us an email info@halifaxjazzfestival.ca.