“We’re in good shape!” says guitarist and the Jazz Festival’s County Artistic Director Brian Leger. “We’ve got a great team this year, with new talent on board.”

After 25 years, they’re keeping it fresh and lively: this year’s lineup brings new sounds and expands the reach of the jazz umbrella.

A couple of decades ago, the festival’s definition of the music was pretty traditional. Performers came from the Toronto scene, with many Boss Brass associates as featured performers. The great Peter Appleyard was a draw.

Now, both the geography and the demographics are different. The mainstage shows still mostly come from Toronto —but that scene has really changed, notes Artistic Director Sarah Kim Turnbull.

“We now get a rich global music influence. This is jazz now. It gives us these different flavours. Maybe we have ideas about what makes ‘jazz,’ but then to see it influenced by Middle Eastern or Cuban rhythms: the depth of that history is profound.”

—Jazz Fest AD Sarah Kim Turnbull

Take Ahmed Moneka, for example. “He’s drawing on his Iraqi and African roots but he’s been in Toronto for a while. He brings the diversity of the city, where artists come and play music together with these diverse cultural and musical backgrounds,” says Ms. Turnbull. 

“We get the richness of this global music influence. This is jazz now. It gives us these different flavours. Maybe we have ideas about what makes ‘jazz,’ but then to see it influenced by Middle Eastern or Cuban rhythms: the depth of that history is profound.”

One advantage of the Festival’s long history is trust from its audience. “I know the programming this year is a bit different, but we’ve built a trust. People will have a really unique and musically rich experience.”

If Toronto brings the genre-bending force behind the mainstage events, the local region is growing richer in talent. Mr. Leger, who organizes festival’s satellite shows, has seen the local grow in the last few years. “We’re able to fill pretty much without having to bring Toronto people into these gigs. It’s getting easier all the time.” From Kingston to Port Hope and northward, the region is dotted with jazz talent.

The satellite shows are presented without charge. “We get a nice combination of local people coming out, as well as out-of-towners coming for the big stage,” says Mr. Legere. The regulars, who return every August, take in as many shows as they can over the six days, picking and choosing among the satellites and taking in the mainstage shows at Huff Estates, Waring House and the Regent.

“The Music of Quincy Jones,” at the Regent, features singers Alana Bridgewater and Christopher Plock, accompanied by a dynamic seven-member ensemble organized by guitarist Eric St-Laurent. The brain-child of festival organizer John Puddy and Ms. Turnbull, the show will traverse the genre-crossing career of a musician who began in mainstream jazz and scaled the heights of popular music by writing and producing for the biggest names, from Frank Sinatra to Michael Jackson, while also writing film scores along the way. It will be fascinating to hear this ensemble navigate the genres from the Count Basie style of big band through R&B and into the funky post-disco revolution of Michael Jackson.

“Eric is the guy for this,” says Ms. Turnbull, “he musically directs lots of things and he’s a producer. He’s put together an all-star band and written arrangements.” And all of this is for the PEC Jazz Festival. “Get your tickets,” exclaims Ms. Turnbull, “because this is going to be unique and you won’t get to see it again, or anywhere else!”

Closing night, at the Waring House, features another cross-cultural musician, pianist Dánae Olano. Originally from Havana, she is now from Toronto, a city she learned about from Jane Bunnett, who leads an all-female band called Maqueque that plays Cuban music. 

Ms. Olano offers perhaps the most straightforward jazz of this year’s various mainstage groups. Her sound is thoroughly modern, showing influences from McCoy Tyner and Bud Powell, playing long strings of eighth-note melodies over sometimes abstract chords, and occasionally inserting jagged phrases you might expect in modern classical music, or splashing a few fistfuls of free-jazz dissonance.

But she always brings a Latin / Cuban flavour to each performance, especially in the rhythms and figures of repetition built into the compositions. “One of my songs is dedicated to my grandma, it’s a dance on a traditional form. I was a little kid,” she recalls, “and I remember her playing the radio all day long. So from there I took on a lot of information, like it was unconscious. It was a long time until I realized, oh my goodness, this is my grandma playing all day long for me at home the great ones, like Peruchin or Lilí Martinez.”

Ms. Olano has been to the County Jazz Festival before, as a member of Maqueque, but on this visit we can expect her trio to be playing originals from their 2024 debut recording, “Children’s Corner,” which commemorates Cuban musical forms through tributes to family members and favorite musicians. 

The music is both serious and intellectual, and yet playful at the same time. You’ll find yourself wanting to dance, and then needing to stop and place your hands on your head to keep your brain from ascending to the ceiling.

The Dánae Olano Trio will be a fitting conclusion to this year’s festival. As she put it about her memory of the Cuban jazz festivals in her youth, “We’d go and hang out there, and had the opportunity to see a lot of beautiful artists.”

We can all do this same here in the County this August 12-17.  

For more information and tickets, visit pecjazz.org.