The Petworth Jazz Project will be hot hot hot this weekend on the lawn at the Petworth Rec Center (8th & Taylor St NW)! Evening starts at 6pm with kids music, jazz at 7pm. As always, there will be blankets available to sit on, but feel free to bring your own blankets and chairs. No pets or booze, according to DPR.

FEATURING: The Lena Seikaly Trio with Todd Simon on Keys and Zach Pride on upright bass.
Baba Ras D will be warming up the kids crowd and BiBi Ja Korean Food Truck will be on site keeping you well fed.

The fun kicks off at 6pm with Baba RAS D and 7pm with Lena Seikaly (two 45 min sets).
Check the PJP Facebook page for weather related updates.

See you on the lawn!

More about Lena Seikaly:

"...one of the local jazz scene’s most promising performers" & "brightest voices in jazz"
- The Washington Post

"Lena Seikaly [is] one of the contenders for D.C.'s best singer, with a rich voice and precise articulation that belies her enormous creativity on the vocal."
– Washington City Paper

LENA SEIKALY is a fresh voice on the national jazz scene from Washington, D.C. A long-time student of music, she began her classical training at age 4 with piano, continued with classical voice in her teens, and went on to complete a B.M. in classical vocal performance at the University of Maryland School of Music. Though on course for a career as an operatic mezzo-soprano, it was in college where Lena discovered a strong passion for jazz, and embarked on a fervent education of jazz history, styles, theory and composition before pursuing a jazz career in the Washington, D.C. area. As a vocalist with several D.C. ensembles, she was a participant at the Jazz Aspen Snowmass program directed by Christian McBride, performed at the North Sea Jazz Festival (The Netherlands), the Jazz Ascona Festival (Switzerland), the Sacramento Jazz Jubilee (CA), and several other national and international venues. In 2009, she was a participant at the Betty Carter Jazz Ahead program at the Kennedy Center in Washington D.C., a prestigious program open to young performer-composers of jazz – there, she studied closely with greats Curtis Fuller, George Cables, Nathan Davis and Carmen Lundy. She was also a Strathmore Artist-in-Residence for the 2009-10 performance season at Bethesda, Maryland’s renowned Strathmore Music Center. Lena has sold out performances at legendary D.C. institutions such as Blues Alley, the Strathmore Mansion, the Kennedy Center’s Millennium Stage, Twins Jazz, and various Smithsonian venues.

In February 2009, Lena released her first album, “Written in the Stars,” comprised of standards and original compositions. In October of 2011, Lena released her second album, "Lovely Changes," to a sold-out crowd at D.C.'s top jazz club, Blues Alley, and the album immediately received critical acclaim from one of D.C.'s leading jazz publications, CapitalBop: "The arrangements and musicianship on the album are crafted to serve the songs, leaving space for the vocal to shine front-and-center. [Seikaly's] voice, the endlessly inventive arrangements, and the sensitive ensemble musicianship serve to make Lovely Changes a complete delight" (Ken Avis, CapitalBop).

An avid educator, Lena has worked as a private teacher of jazz and classical voice, beginning piano and beginning guitar in Washington, D.C., Maryland and Virginia for several years. She was the vocal jazz instructor at the Duke Ellington School of the Arts during the 2008-2009 school year. Beginning in 2010, Lena has been leading educational workshops for jazz vocalists at the Strathmore Music Center.