Jazz Festival's summer series wraps up with Music in the Park

Hundreds of music lovers from near and far gathered in Simcoe Park Saturday for TD Niagara Jazz Festival's Music in the Park. 

Ten musical acts performed across two stages during the day-long event, with five playing on the Fiesta Stage at the bandshell and another five appearing on the Upper Stage, a portable structure set up facing Picton Street. Popular acts included Jazz FM mainstay Heather Bambrick and her band - Stu Harrison on piano, Ross MacIntyre on bass, drummer Ben Wittman and Chase Sanborn on trumpet and flugelhorn - and from Holland and Poland, fusion-jazz band The Wojetk Justyna TreeOh!.

The Festival's recent Jazz 4 the Ages youth winners Jonah Tredway and Antonio Geremia performed, as did the PK Hummingbird Steel Band and from Cuba, Bobby Carcassés did a set with Hungarian-Canadian pianist Attila Fias and his Combo.

New to the festival Sunday was a series of "Tent Talks", with subjects including mental health and how to play the steel drum, as well as fireside chats with trumpeter Carcassés, singer Lorraine Klaasen and drummer Ernesto Cervino. 

Later that evening the party moved across the road to the Irish Harp for a jam session led by the Randy Stirtzinger Trio.

Sunday capped off an eight-day series of concerts and masterclasses in celebration of the tenth anniversary of the jazz festival, begun by co-creators Juliet Dunn and her late husband Peter Shea.