Blue Note Jazz Festival Keeps Jazz and R&B Inside the Same Living Conversation
By Penny Fontaine · 7/23/2026
The 2026 Blue Note Jazz Festival lineup brings Ledisi, Durand Bernarr, Big Freedia, Destin Conrad, Take 6 and other distinctive performers into one program.
Music categories help people locate records. They do not always explain how the music truly lives.
The 2026 Blue Note Jazz Festival New York lineup brings together jazz, R&B, soul, funk, gospel and boundary-pushing performers including Ledisi, Durand Bernarr, Big Freedia, UMI, Destin Conrad, Kokoroko, Cymande, Take 6 and others.
R&B grew through an ongoing conversation with gospel, blues and jazz. Funk changed the physical rhythm of soul music. Hip-hop sampled and reorganized all of those traditions.
Ledisi is a Grammy-winning vocalist whose performances combine jazz discipline, gospel power and contemporary R&B storytelling. Durand Bernarr approaches soul music with theatricality, humor, vocal control and an openly experimental spirit. Take 6 represents a standard of vocal harmony that has influenced gospel, jazz and R&B singers for decades.
WPTG FM operates from a similar principle. A listener can move from classic soul into smooth jazz, neo-soul, Quiet Storm and contemporary R&B without leaving the station’s larger emotional environment.
SOURCE: The officially announced 2026 New York lineup includes Ledisi, Durand Bernarr, Big Freedia, UMI, Destin Conrad, Kokoroko, Cymande and Take 6.
Enjoyed This Story? Share The Groove.
Pass it along and bring somebody else into the conversation.