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Saxophonist-arranger Mike Tomaro looks at the Labor Day jazz festival at Schenley Park as a way of showing off his hardworking big band "to one of its largest crowds ever."

And festival organizer Marty Ashby sees the event as a way of stoking flames for a multiday event next year.

"I think it is obvious that people just want to have a festival like the old ones, spread across various venues with a variety of activities all over town," Ashby says.

Ashby, executive producer of MCG Jazz and the coordinator of concerts at the Manchester Craftsmen's Guild, says he hopes this festival is a precursor to a weeklong one beginning next year.

The city was the heart of jazz festivals from 1982 to 2002 with a number of sponsors. Mellon Financial Corp. was the sponsor from 1986 to 2002, when the last multiday festival took place.

Ashby also points to the festival as a successor of Labor Day weekend jazz festivals the Guild held at Hidden Valley Four Season Resort and Seven Springs Mountain Resort in Somerset County between 1987 and 2001.

Ashby says meetings to discuss a multiday festival in Pittsburgh will begin in the fall.

Sponsors of this year's one-day festival are Duquesne Light, WPGH-Fox 53, Gullifty's Restaurant in Squirrel Hill, WDUQ-FM (90.5), the New Pittsburgh Courier and the Omni William Penn Hotel, Downtown.

The concert also will feature guitarist Sheryl Bailey from New York City and mallet master Dave Samuels, leader of the Caribbean Jazz Project. Samuels also has a following from his days as an original member of Spyro Gyra.

Tomaro is writing several arrangements for Bailey while Samuels is bringing some big-band charts of music from that band.

He says dealing with an unfamiliar band is similar to coping with personnel changes in the Caribbean Jazz Project.

"Whenever there's a personnel shift, it's needless to say I get anxious," he says. "But you just work at it. But Marty says this is a really good band, and I trust him."

For Tomaro, director of jazz studies at Duquesne University, Uptown, the festival is yet another chance to promote the band he wants to become a steady part of the region's concert scene.

"What I have said from the beginning was that I didn't want this band to be just a club band," he says. The band did a series of weekly dates at Dowe's on 9th, Downtown, but he looks at it more as an ensemble to display the art of big-band playing. He doesn't want it to focus simply on playing orchestra favorites.

The band is entering into an agreement with River City Artists Management, a new effort run by the River City Brass Band. That will lead to a series of concerts in the 2007-08 season, according to Denis Colwell, music director of that band.

The jazz band, co-led by trumpeter Steve Hawk from Slippery Rock University in Butler County, features some of the area's jazz stalwarts. It has released one album, and Tomaro says it is working on a second.

Tomaro says he fully realizes concertgoers are going to hear more of Samuels and Bailey than of the big band, but he adds he is going to try to present some arrangements so the band can reveal what it is all about.

"We want to make an impact," he says.

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