Earshot Jazz Festival

Earshot Jazz was founded in 1989 as a Seattle jazz nonprofit — it publishes a monthly magazine and presents concerts year-round — and the October festival is its flagship. Rather than a single site, the festival books more than a dozen rooms across the city over about three weeks, which lets it mix ticketed theater concerts with club dates, premieres and workshops.

A defining feature is the balance between visiting artists and the local scene: the festival is explicitly built to put Pacific Northwest resident musicians on the same bill structure as internationally touring names, and it commissions new work. The 2026 edition was organized around the centennials of John Coltrane and Miles Davis, with marquee sets from Branford Marsalis and Dianne Reeves alongside Gary Bartz, Meshell Ndegeocello and Warren Wolf.