Over the Labor Day weekend downtown Detroit will be overflowing with jazz fans eager to hear their favorite local and national musicians perform at the annual Detroit Jazz Festival. This is one of the few times of the year when people can witness world-class jazz musicians for free.
Yet, the festival is not only a place where audiences can hear national jazz musicians. Over the last decade, under the stewardship of DJF Artistic Director Chris Collins, the festival has become a launching pad for some of Detroit’s finest, homegrown, young talent, allowing them the opportunity to get national exposure. These musicians bring their best to the stages of the festival, drawing just as big a crowd as the national talent.
“Jazz has always been a living, breathing art,” says Collins. “It’s as much about the aspiring artists as the legacy artists. And those in the heart of their career, they’re all very important elements of the evolution of the art form.”
Swinging beyond his years
Making their DJF debut as leaders this year are pianist William Hill III and drummer Louis Jones III. Hill and Jones are young and seriously gifted jazz musicians lighting up the Detroit jazz scene and are also celebrating the release of new music.
At 21, Hill’s command of the ivories belies his youth. A close listen to any of his solo excursions it’s clear the late jazz pianists Ahmad Jamal and Oscar Peterson’s styles were source material during the early leg of Hill’s development.
He’s on a full scholarship at the Manhattan School of the Arts in New York and will be a senior this fall. This is his first time leading a band at the festival. He’s previously been a sideman performing with the Detroit Public School Showcase as a member of the Detroit School of the Arts Jazz Band, and last year he performed with trumpeter Jauron Perry, winner of the Detroit Jazz Festival Collegiate competition.
“I was very thankful, very excited when I found out that I was chosen to perform at the festival,” says Hill. “This has been a dream of mine for a very long time, so it’s taken a few years to get to where I am right now. I’m grateful that I’m able to express myself both as a person and musically in bands on the stage of the Detroit Jazz Festival.”
As a kid, Hill learned on the family piano, which his grandmother purchased for him and his sister. He studied classical music and at age 11, switched to jazz, developing a love for big band jazz and ragtime music, which is apparent in his playing and his affinity for dressing in suits and ties on the band.
“I liked watching videos by Cab Calloway and Louis Armstrong, and I was really encouraged and inspired by them both on trumpet and piano,” he says.
At jazz workshops on the East Coast like Jazz House Kids, Jazz at Lincoln Center’s Jazz Academy, and Betty Carter’s Jazz Ahead residency at the Kennedy Center, he honed his style. Since moving to New York, he’s performed with his trio regularly at Minton’s Playhouse and Smalls and he has toured internationally with vocalist Jazzmeia Horn.
Giving the young drummer some
Jones, 26, another graduate of DSA, has also been crafting a reputation for his rhythmic prowess on the drums, performing as a sideman with established musicians. Jones, unlike some young jazz drummers, isn’t a show boater. He’s a meticulous timekeeper and respectful accompanist. It would be an exaggeration to point out his rimshots and attack is akin to the late drummer Roy Haynes. Jones’s experience with the jazz festival dates back to his childhood when he would attend the festival with his father, an avid jazz head.
“That was our thing every year since I was a child, going to the festival,” he says. “My dad and I would go to venues like Harmony Park and hear jazz, and that’s where I remember meeting Gayelynn McKinney and her family. So I’ve always been around music.”
Jones has developed quite a fruitful relationship with the festival, which led to his participation in the Detroit Jazz Festival All-Stars Generation Sextet, who recently traveled to Japan.
Every year, under the direction of Collins, the festival features a collection of some of the most innovative and creative musicians representing the new generation of swingers from Detroit. The Sextet presents original compositions that fuse post-bop with contemporary musical genres. This year, the band performed in Japan for two weeks and taught jazz at Japanese universities.
“That was my first time in Japan and it was very beautiful,” says Jones. “The people, the connections I made. They accepted me into their culture and they gave me gifts. It was a very giving trip, I must say, and I learned a lot.”
Jones also used the trip to showcase some of the original compositions from his debut album Motions, available Sept. 1, the same day of his Detroit jazz fest debut.
The record is inspired by his time in Detroit and consists of groove-heavy tracks combined with a vanguardist approach.
“I was mentored by musicians like Wendell Harrison and Marion Hayden,” says Jones. “All of them have inspired me compositionally, like the way that they write. I’ve taken their ideas and their concepts and tried to make them my own as much as possible. I feel like I have something for everybody on this record.”
Hill is also releasing new music which he will be playing during his set at the festival. His new album Keep it Movin, was released on Aug. 22.
“The main objective of the album is really to push me forward and see what’s next in my life in terms of personal things and musical things,” he says.
Expect to hear some serious straight ahead jazz full of swinging melodies from Hill’s powerhouse rhythm trio. Hill and Jones are just two ambitious stars from Detroit, but there are more in the city building solid reputations.
Other rising stars performing at the festival are drummer Tariq Gardner, saxophonist Kasan Belgrave, pianist Sequoia “REDWOOD” Snyder (performing with drummer Gayelynn McKinney’s trio GSL), pianist Brendan Davis, trumpeter Trunino Lowe, and bassist Jonathan Muir Cotton, currently touring nationally and internationally with pianist Christian Sands. Cotton, Lowe, and Belgrave will be performing with Jones.
Artist in Residence Jason Moran will feature some lesser known budding swingers from the DJF Collegiate Jazz Orchestra for his Sunday performance.
Hill and Jones are examples of the homegrown talent that keeps Detroit’s jazz scene relevant and thriving. They have earned note for note the exposure at a globally respected music event like the Detroit Jazz Festival.
Collins plans to keep young musicians at the forefront of the festival because he knows how important it is to their professional development.
“I look for ways to support their professional careers as they cross important artistic thresholds in their own life and these young artists were featured at the festival this year because they’ve achieved a moment in their career where they’re being very innovative with the language,” says Collins.
This article appears in Aug 20 – Sep 2, 2025.