The DC Jazz Festival is back this week for its 11th annual edition, running from Wednesday, June 10 through Tuesday, June 16. It’s grown steadily over the years: What began as largely a spotlight on the local scene has graduated into a fully fledged international festival, still with dozens of D.C.-based talent performing at venues around town, but also with big names at impressive, sometimes outdoor venues. This year, the draws include Esperanza Spalding, Jack DeJohnette and (at CapitalBop’s DC Jazz Loft Series stage) Thundercat. The CapitalBop calendar is full of DC Jazz Fest listings for your perusal (we don’t quite have every single one of the many dozens; you can find a complete list at dcjazzfest.org/schedule). Here are our top picks.

Obviously we want you to come out and hear our amazing shows at the Hecht Warehouse District, so before you read any further, check out our series landing page. But the picks below all pertain to non-CapitalBop stages at the festival, in order to give you a more impartial tasting menu. Here’s the hip jazz listener’s cheat sheet to proper festivaling.

WEDNESDAY, JUNE 10

BRAXTON COOK MEETS BUTCHER BROWN

at Bohemian Caverns
DMV-based saxophonist Braxton Cook and drummer Corey Fonville share the stage often: they are both members of Christian Scott’s band and they both lead successful groups on their own. Tonight Fonville’s band Butcher Brown and Cook celebrate a musical merge in the release of their EP. Two separate sets at 7:30 and 9:30 p.m.

THURSDAY, JUNE 11

GRETCHEN PARLATO AND LIONEL LOUEKE

at Bohemian Caverns
Gretchen Parlato, winner of the 2004 Thelonious Monk Competition, is an acutely talented singer whose smokily rhythmic vocal gymnastics are immediately distinctive. Here she’s paired up with Lionel Loueke, a guitarist that creates ensembles of sound all by himself, singing in his percussive Beninese dialects, stretching his rhythmic ideas almost to the point of collapse, and playing bass lines along to his own guitar solos. Two separate sets at 7:30 and 9:30 p.m.

FRIDAY, JUNE 12

THE BAD PLUS JOSHUA REDMAN

at the Hamilton
The Bad Plus – Ethan Iverson on piano, Reid Anderson on bass and Dave King on drums – improvises on acoustic instruments with a captivating stridency. Whether that makes them a jazz band, per se, is a common point of contention. Tonight they are joined by Joshua Redman, one of the world’s best tenor saxophonists. He won the Thelonious Monk International Jazz Saxophone Competition at the age of 22, and ever since has come to symbolize self-sustainment through discovery in straight-ahead jazz.

SATURDAY, JUNE 13

ESPERANZA SPALDING, COMMON, FEMI KUTI & MARSHALL KEYS

at Yards Park
To the degree that the city-wide blanket known as the DC Jazz Festival has a main event, this is it. In the second of two days at Yards Park, the festival presents a full day of music across the spectrum of the diaspora. World-renowned and highly creative bassist, composer and vocalist Esperanza Spalding headlines a star-studded cast. She recently launched her new project “Emily’s D+Evolution,” a multi-medium leap into her curious mind, via music, theatrics, and media. Also on the bill is longtime rapper and actor Common, who has a lengthy discography of deep, funky, genre-fusing lyrical Black music to pull from. Before him comes Femi Kuti, Fela Kuti’s eldest son, who has pioneered a modern Afro-beat sound for decades without losing sight of the pure funk that made his father’s music so moving. Opening the day is D.C.-based saxophone master Marshall Keys. All in all, this promises to be one of the better opportunities during DC Jazz Fest to shake that thang and let your hair down.

SUNDAY, JUNE 14

REGINALD CYNTJE (EAST RIVER JAZZ FEST)

at Honfleur Gallery
Reginald Cyntje, arguably D.C.’s most agile and expressive trombone player, celebrates the legacy of composer and Duke Ellington accomplice Billy Strayhorn in this concert, part of East River Jazz Fest’s partnership with the DC Jazz Fest.

MONDAY, JUNE 15

BOHEMIAN CAVERNS JAZZ ORCHESTRA WITH OLIVER LAKE

at Bohemian Caverns
The 17-piece Bohemian Caverns Jazz Orchestra commands the Caverns every Monday night with a repertoire ranging from Count Basie to Coltrane to band members’ originals. Some truly excellent soloists strengthen the big band’s arrangements. The weekly engagement at the Caverns is one of D.C.’s most reliable jazz offerings. Here, as part of the DC Jazz Festival, the orchestra appears with the stalwart experimentalist and alto saxophonist Oliver Lake, a founder of the Black Artists Group in St. Louis, and a founding member of the World Saxophone Quartet.

TUESDAY, JUNE 16

CHARLES RAHMAT WOODS

at the Phillips Collection
Saxophonist and flautist Charles Rahmat Woods regularly performs straight-ahead jazz at restaurants and bars, but in his heart there’s always a smoldering love for the avant-garde. The bright, bracing soprano specialist brings his interpretive quartet to the Phillips Collection on the final day of the DC Jazz Fest.

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