CherawSouth Carolina
Your weekend.
All that jazz.
2026 ScheduleOctober 15–18
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Thursday, October 15
Opening day
The Sam Edwards Group celebrates Bird & Diz
Outdoor
Free. Hidden Treasures & Constitution BBQ food trucks
Willie Bradley
Festival Kick-Off
Free. All ages, bring chairs, Unity BBQ food truck
Friday, October 16
· Theatre concert · Evening
Paul & Susan
Kris Houser
Reggie Sullivan
Empire Strikes Brass
. Bring chairs
SC Super Cool Sextet
Michael Knight
Kris Houser
Javier Vega Jazz
Bhakti Larry Hough & the Bhakti Project
Joe Gransden & the Little Big Band
From Heart to Horn: Celebrating Tony Bennett’s Centennial & Dizzy Gillespie’s Genius
Featured Theatre performance. Doors 6pm. $35 single / $60 weekend pass
Hank Bilal
Reggie Sullivan
Robert Gardiner / Zach Bingham Quartet
Empire Strikes Brass
Roderick Brown
Saturday, October 17
Parade · Arts & family · Theatre concert · Evening
Sidewalk Chalk Contest
All ages, prizes. Info: 843.537.8420 x12
19th Dizzy Gillespie Scholarship Golf Tournament
Final year
Contact: James Sweeney, 843.921.7979
Easel Cathedral Exhibit
Meet artist Trahern Cook, 2–3pm
Bebop Parade
Empire Strikes Brass & Paperhand Puppet Project
Line-up 10:30am. All ages, prizes
Meet & Greet: Frank Motley
Cheraw Chronicles, a collection of poems
Author with family roots in Cheraw
Kid’s Art Alley
SC Governor’s School
Free art activities & Drumming for Dizzy
Caricature Artist Jerry Frazee
Free
From the Be to the Bop: The Musical Legacy of Dizzy Gillespie
Presented by SC ETV. Free
The Poetic Experience with Poet Cary Gray
Free
208th Army Jazz Band
Free concert. Bring chairs, food trucks
Amos Hoffman Group
Timepiece Band
Ethan Bautz Funk Unit
Art on the Town Green
Plein air demos
Meet 2026 poster artist Ashley Berendzen
Florence Area Big Band (FABB)
Free concert. Bring chairs, food trucks
Conversation with Al Fraser
Co-author, To Be or Not to Bop: Dizzy Gillespie’s Memoirs
Free. Gillespie family church
Carl Sinkler
Poinsett Septet
Amos Hoffman Group
Charlton Singleton & the Honeycomb Jazz Orchestra
Featured Theatre performance. Doors 6pm. $35 single / $60 weekend pass
Timepiece Band
Ethan Bautz Funk Unit
Roderick Brown
Longleaf Social
Sunday, October 18
Festival finale
PASSPORT: Dizzy Gillespie, America’s First Jazz Ambassador
Mark Rapp, SC’s Jazz Ambassador
FREE. Pre-show street parade from the Dizzy Gillespie statue
1956 · The Assignment
In 1956, the U.S. State Department sent Dizzy Gillespie around the world as the first jazz ambassador this country ever appointed.
- Iran
- Pakistan
- Lebanon
- Turkey
- Greece
- Yugoslavia
Quincy Jones was his musical director. He refused to play segregated houses, and where the doors were closed to local kids, he opened them.
2026 · Seventy Years Later
South Carolina named a Jazz Ambassador of its own. On October 18, he’s bringing that story home to Cheraw.
The Journey
PASSPORT is a concert built like a journey, and every stop is a stamp.
It begins fifteen minutes from where John Birks Gillespie was born, with the rhythms he first heard coming through the walls of a Sanctified church — the polyrhythm he said stayed with him for life.
It moves to Minton’s Playhouse and 52nd Street, where a handful of kids invented bebop on purpose to be too hard to play.
It lands in Havana by way of Chano Pozo, the Cuban drummer who walked into Dizzy’s band unable to read a note of what they were playing — and changed the direction of American music anyway.
It follows the 1956 tour across three continents. And it comes home.
The Band
Trumpeter Mark Rapp — South Carolina’s Jazz Ambassador, named by the State House of Representatives in 2018 — leads a seven-piece band through the music and tells the story between the tunes. Three horns, a full rhythm section, and Afro-Cuban percussion.
- Con Alma
- Tin Tin Deo
- A Night in Tunisia
- Manteca
The Finale
It closes the 2026 South Carolina Jazz Festival with the loudest, most joyful ninety minutes of the weekend — and it is the only concert on this year’s schedule that could not be performed anywhere else on earth.
Free and open to everyone.
Bring the family. Bring someone who’s never been to a jazz concert.
Sunday, October 18 · 2:00pm · Theatre on the Green, 200 Market St · Ninety minutes, no intermission.