This fall 2025, JazzFest White Plains returns for its 14th year with more energy and excitement than ever. The 5-day festival presents 18 live performances taking place across downtown White Plains – from emerging talent to world-renowned artists, including seven GRAMMY Award winners and nominees.
Schedule
Saturday, September 13
The MCW Jazz Faculty Ensemble
Jazz Jam with MCW Faculty
12-1pm | FREE (donations welcome)
Music Conservatory of Westchester (216 Central Ave.)
The Music Conservatory of Westchester (MCW) Faculty Jazz Ensemble presents Modern Standards, a concert that features original arrangements of popular hit songs from yesterday and today. The music, representing the ingenuity of jazz interpretation, will feature MCW’s world-class faculty and take place in the Conservatory’s Recital Hall. It will also be streamed live online.
A jam session will immediately follow the concert program. This session is open to all ages and levels of experience and will be facilitated by MCW faculty.
Immanuel Wilkins Quartet
3pm (doors 2:30pm) | $30
ArtsWestchester (31 Mamaroneck Ave.)
GRAMMY-Award-nominated alto saxophonist and composer Immanuel Wilkins is one of the vital voices of jazz in the 21st century. Wilkins, a native of Pennsylvania, moved to New York in 2015 for studies at the Juilliard School, and has since worked with a wide range of artists, including Wynton Marsalis, Joel Ross, Solange, Gerald Clayton, Kenny Barron and many others. His Blue Note debut, Omega, took the number-one spot on The New York Times’s list of Best Jazz Albums of 2020. In 2023, Wilkins was ranked number one in the Downbeat Critics Poll in three categories: Alto Saxophonist, Rising Star Composer, and Rising Star Group.
Bertha Hope
with special guest vocalist Joe Boykin
5-6:15pm | FREE
Freebird Kitchen & Bar (161 Mamaroneck Ave.)
Pianist Bertha Hope, one of jazz’s living legends, has toured globally with artists like Nat Adderley, Dizzy Gillespie and Eddie Henderson while being a respected educator and bandleader in her own right. She is a recipient of the National Jazz Museum in Harlem’s Legends of Jazz award (2018), the Jazz Foundation of America’s Lifetime Achievement award (2024), and was recently named a Jazz Legacies Fellow by the Mellon Foundation (2025). She will be joined by guest vocalist and local favorite, Joe Boykin.
Kenny Barron Trio
General seating: $55 (7pm or 9pm) // $100: both sets
ArtsWestchester (31 Mamaroneck Ave.)
Honored by The National Endowment for the Arts as a Jazz Master, Kenny Barron has an unmatched ability to mesmerize audiences with his elegant playing, sensitive melodies and infectious rhythms. The Los Angeles Times named him “one of the top jazz pianists in the world” and Jazz Weekly called him “the most lyrical piano player of our time.”
