Early aspen leaves will pop across the hills and splashy air balloons will lumber through the sky. And over in Town Park, jazz icons like McCoy Tyner, Dave Liebman and Joe Lovano will kick start Telluride’s summer festival season by churning up some sweet noise. 

If you haven’t heard, the Telluride Jazz Celebration, a staple of music in Telluride since 1977, has found a new time slot, moving back two months to a weekend it hopes will offer more sunshine.

The Jazz Celebration will take place June 5-8 in Town Park. It just released its preliminary lineup, and it promises another year of seasoned jazz pioneers, contemporary musical innovators and boundary-bending vocalists.

“We’re kind of excited because we’re going to be king of the kick-off music festival for the season,” said Telluride Jazz Celebration founder Paul Machado.

This year’s Guest of Honor is McCoy Tyner, a four-time Grammy winner whose blues-based piano style has helped shape modern jazz. Tyner, who was in The John Coltrane Quartet, has been changing the musical landscape for decades with his adventurous and adroit manipulation of the keys.

Then there will be Bettye LaVette, a soul-singer whose voice, which cuts and soars with improbable passion, has made her a cult favorite. And Maelstrom Trio featuring Skerik, a Seattle saxophone player and indefatigable trailblazer of new sounds who was in both Critters Buggin’ and Garage a Trois. And Grupo Fantasma, a 11-piece Latin orchestra from Austin that combines funk, mambo, merenge and cumba for an electric live performance.

“It’s a really great, hot Latin Cuban high energy fun big ensemble,” Machado said. “Those guys are going to be a lot of fun.”

Rounding out the preliminary lineup is sax player Joe Lovano, the Dave Liebman Group, young vocalist Simone (Nina Simone’s daughter),  the Crescent Super Band and the Telluride Student All-Star Jazz Ensemble.

And to flesh out the lineup, Machado expects to lock down some really great headliners, he said.

Jazz has historically taken place in early August during a weekend that coincides with Telluride’s heavy monsoon rains. Year after year, the jazz would play and the rain would come, in sheets, in drizzles and in thunderous storms, leaving the crowd soaked and the ground sodden.

So last year, after a torrential downpour scattered the crowd during Bill Frisell’s Sunday set, Machado decided to act. He petitioned for, and was granted, the new weekend, which positions the Jazz Celebration at the onset of the summer festival season (the weekend after MountainFilm) and side by side with the Telluride Balloon Festival.
The Balloon Festival will stage launches from Town Park shortly after dawn, as usual, and Jazz will occupy the park during the daytime and early evening hours. And as people exit the park, the Balloon Glo will light up main street, followed by late-night jazz in venues and bars around downtown.

Machado said the feedback he’s heard about Jazz’s new time slot has been really positive.

“Everybody knows it’s raining for Jazz, and we kind of got that tag line. We want to shake that off, because it’s a great festival with great music, and we want to do it in the sunshine,” Machado said.

Right now is the ideal time to grab tickets, as Jazz is having a super sale until Jan. 15. These discounted tickets are: $39 for single day, $99 for three-day park passes, $135 for weekend all access and $550 for patron passes.

For tickets, visit www.telluridejazz.org or by calling 728-7009.