{"id":1168,"date":"2016-03-21T12:09:24","date_gmt":"2016-03-21T16:09:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jazzinthegardens.com\/?p=1168"},"modified":"2016-11-21T12:11:05","modified_gmt":"2016-11-21T17:11:05","slug":"while-miami-was-distracted-with-ultra-jazz-in-the-gardens-had-a-blast","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jazzinthegardens.com\/firstact\/2016\/while-miami-was-distracted-with-ultra-jazz-in-the-gardens-had-a-blast\/","title":{"rendered":"While Miami Was Distracted With Ultra, Jazz in the Gardens Had a Blast"},"content":{"rendered":"

There was music for every appetite over this past weekend. While downtown was the neon scene for Ultra Music Festival, Sun Life Stadium offered a change of pace with the 11th edition of Jazz in the Gardens. The Miami Gardens festival offered food alongside jazz, gospel, funk, rock, and R&B. A few weeks ago,\u00a0we caught up with City of Miami Gardens Mayor Oliver Gilbert<\/a>, and he told us how Jazz in the Gardens has grown from something very small and primarily just for locals to something massive, with more than 70,000 fans from around Florida and the world.<\/p>\n

Despite a late and questionable cancellation from Aretha Franklin \u2013 the festival owned, operated, and supported by the City of Miami Gardens soldiered on. Thanks to Charlie Wilson, Janelle Mon\u00e1e, Kool & the Gang, Babyface, Brian Culbertson, and Usher, the 11th-annual Jazz in the Gardens was two days of good vibes, delicious food, and incredible live music.<\/p>\n

On day one, there was Charlie Wilson\u2019s two-hour set (which featured four wardrobe changes). He capped the evening at 2 a.m. Around 1:45 in the morning, fans were still chanting, \u201cCharlie! Charlie!\u201d and it seemed unlikely he would ever stop. The moving and raspy voice of Michael McDonald (not the MMA fighter, in case you were wondering) had toes a tappin\u2019 all over Sun Life Stadium with classics like \u201cAin\u2019t No Mountain High Enough.\u201d Kool & the Gang\u2019s grand finale, which consisted of \u201cLadies’ Night,\u201d “Get Down on It,\u201d and \u201cCelebrate,\u201d was truly incredible \u2014 the live version of \u201cCelebrate\u201d is so much better than the one we almost exclusively hear from cheesy wedding DJs.<\/p>\n

On day two, Brian Culbertson\u2019s keyboard solo was arguably the highlight of the weekend. He played backward, reverse, standard, missionary, and doggy style \u2013 it was brilliant. Janelle Mon\u00e1e\u2019s energetic set started with heavy metal, and, surprisingly, worked. She also covered James Brown and the Jackson 5 and shared a stronger message. \u201cI wear black and white to pay respect to all races, and if you believe women should be paid as much as men, make some noise!\u201d The ladies roared.<\/p>\n

Babyface strolled through various hits \u2014 some of which he wrote and produced for other artists \u2014 from Bobby Brown\u2019s \u201cRock Wit’cha\u201d to Boyz II Men\u2019s \u201cEnd of the Road.\u201d It proved to be a stellar trip down R&B’s memory lane. Even Usher couldn\u2019t resist joining Babyface, as the two joined onstage for a quick cameo.<\/p>\n

The final set of the weekend was Usher. He played one of those sets consisting of endless hits, which led us to realize just how many hits Usher actually has. It’s a lot \u2014 trust us.<\/p>\n

He played nearly all of them: “Burn,” “Hey Daddy (Daddy’s\u00a0Home),” “U Got It Bad,” \u201cYeah,\u201d “Lovers and Friends,” and, to bridge the gap between the weekend\u2019s two biggest festivals, UMF and JITG, Usher finished his set from the middle of the crowd with “Without You,” a song he released in 2011 with David Guetta.<\/p>\n

While Ultra might have gotten all of the attention, they didn’t care over in the Gardens. They did just fine without EDM.<\/p>\n

SOURCE<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There was music for every appetite over this past weekend. While downtown was the neon scene for Ultra Music Festival, Sun Life Stadium offered a change of pace with the 11th edition of Jazz in the Gardens. The Miami Gardens festival offered food alongside jazz,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1169,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1168","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news-updates"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jazzinthegardens.com\/firstact\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1168","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jazzinthegardens.com\/firstact\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jazzinthegardens.com\/firstact\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jazzinthegardens.com\/firstact\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jazzinthegardens.com\/firstact\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1168"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/jazzinthegardens.com\/firstact\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1168\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jazzinthegardens.com\/firstact\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1169"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jazzinthegardens.com\/firstact\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1168"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jazzinthegardens.com\/firstact\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1168"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jazzinthegardens.com\/firstact\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1168"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}