By Jon Pareles
NEW ORLEANS — Another year, another New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival, and another anniversary — the 40th — for this euphorically site-specific cultural guardian. I’m here for the second four-day “weekend” of Jazzfest, and I’ve been blinking in the sunlight after the wee-hours club marathon of the Ponderosa Stomp.
True to the New Orleans traditions that it collects and promotes — and that have long since added Jazzfest to their calendar of annual rituals — the festival makes only incremental changes from year to year. Even in 2006 after Hurricane Katrina, when the festival’s longtime site, the Fair Grounds Race Course, needed extensive repairs (including restoring its electrical system), it simulated its old familiarity; the Vaucresson Sausage Company sandwich stand was in its regular place, though its New Orleans factory had been destroyed.
More at: Musicians Mark a Jazzfest Anniversary on an Easygoing Thursday – ArtsBeat Blog – NYTimes.com.