Nate Smith named artistic director of Newport Jazz Festival
Nate Smith is stepping into Newport's artistic director chair after two 2026 Grammys, bringing a groove-first ear to the festival.
Nate Smith was named artistic director of the Newport Jazz Festival for a three-year run beginning with the 2026 event at Fort Adams State Park in Newport, Rhode Island. The appointment puts Smith inside the festival’s booking, artistic direction, community building and year-round jazz education work, and it came after his two 2026 Grammy wins for LIVE-ACTION and “Big Fish.”
The move fits a drummer whose work has never sat neatly in one lane. Smith’s own musical world runs from Betty Carter and Dave Holland to Michael Jackson, Brittany Howard, Chris Potter and Lionel Loueke, and a recent feature on him keeps circling back to the details drummers obsess over: cross-stick choices, snare tone and the way his phrasing makes a groove feel like it is already in motion. That is the kind of feel that turns a pocket into something listeners can almost see.
Smith’s leadership role also arrives with LIVE-ACTION still central to his profile. His site frames the record as a producer-led project built to activate relationships he has been building over the last five or six years, and the deluxe edition landed on January 16, 2026 as a new expanded version. The album folds in Josh Johnson, Marquis Hill, Charlie Hunter, Lionel Loueke, Michael League, Ben Williams, DJ Harrison, Keifer, Lalah Hathaway, Jermaine Holmes and the group säje, which makes the Newport post look less like a ceremonial title than an extension of the same bandleading instincts that drive his records.
At Newport, Smith takes over from Christian McBride after McBride’s decade in the role, with festival founder George Wein part of the leadership lineage before him. The 2026 festival is set for July 31 through August 2, and Smith now steps from the drum chair into a larger frame built around the same beat-first instinct that has made his playing so widely watched.
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