Play The Texas Coast September - November | Page 30

CORPUS CHRISTI

The month of October is a favorite among jazz fans
from all around Texas and they’ll be gathering in Corpus Christi for the 56th Annual Texas Jazz Festival. The
3-day jazz festival features music from local and regional talent, along with lots of food and drink, and
plenty of arts and crafts vendors.
The Texas Jazz Festival Society focuses on increasing awareness of traditional, modern and
Latin Jazz through presentation of the Texas
Jazz Festival in Corpus Christi. The great news is
that everyone can attend. There is never a cover
charge. The Jazz Festival is a FREE event!
The fun starts Friday Oct. 21 and continues
through Sunday, Oct. 23, 2016. Over 50 great
bands will be playing on 3 stages set amongst
historic homes and beautiful trees in downtown’s Heritage Park, along with some of the
greats in jazz music giving you their all. A crowd
favorite, Kyle Turner, will be returning from his
home base in Houston. This creative and innovative artist will be pulling out all the stops when
he brings forth those sultry musical notes he’s
known for from his saxophone.

If you haven’t heard him yet here’s your chance.
Witness him and other great jazz musicians up
close and in person, as they play their hearts out
in Heritage Park at the 56th Annual Texas Jazz
Festival. You deserve to experience live jazz for
yourself! So mark your calendar and get your hotel reservations early because 3-days of jazz are
coming to Corpus Christi and it’s just for YOU!
And while you’re in Corpus for the Jazz Festival
be sure and check out The Bluff which divides
Downtown from Uptown. The north end of this
40-foot bluff is a border between uptown and
downtown and was built after 1900. Massive
concrete retaining walls are highlighted with
elegant balustrades and grand stairways. The
sculpture at Peoples Street was designed by
Pompeo Coppini in 1914 and property owners

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such as John G. Kenedy financed and donated
land at the south end in 1931.
You can drive it, bike it or walk it and it provides
you with a view that will go along nicely with
that great jazz you’ve been listening to. Follow
it southward and downward and it will gradually
flow into the prettiest street in Corpus Christi.
How do you get there? Ask anybody where the
prettiest street in Corpus Christi is and they’ll all
say the same thing – Ocean Drive! It’s a favorite
drive for locals and visitors alike and the ocean
front mansions lining the street command the
best views of Nueces Bay in the city. It’s also very
historic, especially in the area of the bluff as this
is where the city was born.
Corpus Christi got its’ start in 1839 when a rather colorful gentleman from Pennsylvania by the
name of Henry Lawrence Kinney built a trading
post on the bluff on a site known as the Old Indian Trading Grounds. He would be the first on the
bluff and established Corpus Christi as Kinney's
Rancho. During the Mexican-American War, Kinney served on General James Pinckney Henderson's campaign staff and at the end of the war
he returned to the area and continued trading.
He was elected as a senator to the Ninth Texas
Congress and served as a delegate to the Con-