58 | AUGUST 29 • 2024 

M

imi Fox has spent many 
years devoting her jazz 
guitar talents to compos-
ing, live performing, recording and 
teaching. She has connected with 
platforms in Michigan, where a 
Kalamazoo-made guitar has been 
designed in her honor.
In all her musical time around the 
world, Fox hasn’t been scheduled to 
appear with the Detroit Jazz Festival 
— until this year, when the Mimi 
Fox Organ Trio can be heard from 

8:05-9:10 p.m. Saturday, Aug. 31, on 
the Absopure Waterfront Stage in 
Hart Plaza.
The annual free Detroit jazz 
celebration runs Aug. 30-Sept. 2 
in the Downtown Detroit area and 
features a wide lineup of stellar 
musicians.
“I’m very excited to be coming 
to Detroit with Brian Ho on organ 
and Lorca Hart, the son of Billy 
Hart, on drums,” Fox said. “We’ll 
be doing a mixture of my original 

compositions and some Wes 
Montgomery arrangements that I’ve 
made. 
“I’ve been touring pretty much 
nonstop in support of the album 
‘One for Wes,’ which seems like 
it’s going to be a perfect fit for the 
festival in Detroit. It’s been a pretty 
popular fit, and last year we had 
six shows for this jazz at Lincoln 
Center, which was really fun. We’ve 
been touring for about a year and a 
half in support of our program, and 
it shows no sign of letting up. It’s 
really cool.” 
Fox has explained her Wes 
Montgomery fandom and new 
approach to his music. 
“Last year was the 100th 
anniversary of the birth of Wes 
Montgomery, one of the great 
guitar innovators of the 20th 
century,” she said. “I’m a big fan 
of Wes, and everything just sort of 
came together. As a composer, I 
wrote a lot of material that is Wes-
influenced yet it’s all mine. That was 
a little different take on it.”
Fox, whose love for music 
derives from family members who 
surrounded themselves with music, 
got a guitar when she was 10 and 
living in New York. With a bit of 
mentoring, she is mostly self-taught. 
“When I was 7 or 8, I would take 
my mom’s soup pots and bang along 
to my dad’s old Dixieland records,” 
she said. “I think my mom got sick 
of me destroying her soup pots so 
she got me a guitar. I completely 
fell in love with the instrument, 
and, as soon as I got home and did 
my homework, I would play until 
dinner.
“After dinner, I would go into my 
room and play until I fell asleep. I 
told my mom early on that this is all 
I want to do is play this instrument. 
An older cousin taught me a few 
chords, but I taught myself from 
listening to records.”
With offers to do studio work, 
Fox moved to California in 1979. 
Although she felt confined by the 
studio environment, she found 
other creative opportunities and 
began traveling the world to 
perform.

COURTESY OF MIMI FOX

Jazz guitarist Mimi 
Fox brings her own 
compositions and 
Wes Montgomery 
arrangements.

SUZANNE CHESSLER 
CONTRIBUTING WRITER

ARTS&LIFE
MUSIC

Sharing 
The
Vibe

Details

Mimi Fox will appear 8:05-
9:10 p.m. Saturday, Aug.31, 
on the Absopure Waterfront 
Stage in Hart Plaza as part 
of the free Detroit Jazz 
Festival, which runs Aug. 
30-Sept. 2 on several stages 
 in the city’s Downtown area. 
For details, go to 
detroitjazzfest.org.

Jazz guitarist 
Mimi Fox is on 
the road again 
to perform at 
the Detroit 
Jazz Festival. 

