Pitt Jazz Week 2026: An Organ Summit

Pittsburgh's jazz calendar is about to get a little heavier on the low end. The University of Pittsburgh's Jazz Studies program is running Pitt Jazz Week from Monday, November 2 to Saturday, November 7, and the whole thing is built around a single instrument: the organ. The centerpiece is the 56th Annual Pitt Jazz Seminar and Concert, themed "Organ Summit," which lands on Saturday, November 7, at 8:00 PM at Bellefield Hall Auditorium. Doors open at 7:15, and the venue is at 315 S. Bellefield Avenue, 15260. General admission is $20 and student tickets are $5, with a $3 fee added to every ticket. You can grab them through the Jazz Studies website.

The instrument itself is part of the draw. The concert features the university's historic 1928 Moller organ, which packs 10,000 pipes and is the largest in the Pittsburgh area. The lineup leans hard into the organ's golden age, with Cliff Barnes, Greg Lewis, and Ben Paterson at the keys, backed by Bobby Broom, Peter Bernstein, John Shannon, and Mark Strickland on guitar, Yoko Suzuki on saxophone, Chad Taylor and Kobie Watkins on drums, and Raina Welch on vocals. The seminar was founded in 1970 by the late saxophonist and educator Nathan Davis, so it's been a fixture of the city's jazz scene for over half a century.

If you can't make the Saturday night concert, the rest of the week is worth a look, and a lot of it costs nothing. It kicks off Monday at noon with the Pitt Jazz Ensemble and guest organist Cliff Barnes at the William Pitt Union's Lower Lounge. Tuesday brings a free tribute to Joe Negri with the Mark Strickland Quartet at the New Granada Theater in the Hill District, and Wednesday adds a screening of "Killer B3" at the Public Health Auditorium. Thursday's "The Jazz Salon" is a free concert featuring Pitt Jazz Studies graduate students back at Bellefield, and Friday doubles up with a panel on the popularity of organ jazz at the Frick Fine Arts Auditorium and a musician seminar with Kobie Watkins over in Hazelwood. Saturday morning fills in the gaps before the big show: a daytime seminar with Greg Lewis and Raina Welch at the Afro American Music Institute in Homewood, a workshop with Ben Paterson, and a guitar masterclass with Peter Bernstein.

It's a dense week, but the names are the real story. Greg Lewis has built a whole discography around the organ, from "Organ Monk Sings" to "The Breathe Suite," and was once named DownBeat's rising star for organ. Ben Paterson is a Steinway Artist who took first place at the 2018 Ellis Marsalis International Jazz Piano Competition and has played on a Grammy-winning record. Bobby Broom, who currently tours with Steely Dan, has a long history with the organ, including "Bobby Broom & The Organi-Sation: Soul Fingers." If you're not sure which night to pick, the whole week is broadcast on WZUM, so you can catch the seminar on Friday and Sunday nights and on Saturday. Whether you're there for the 10,000 pipes or the players, it's a good excuse to spend a week listening to the organ.