To George Petit, jazz is “a language and a lexicon that is shared all over the world.” While its players have a common vocabulary, how they employ it can vary widely. And, the Stowe guitarist explained, dialects and accents within that language help form a rich and diverse musical tradition that has the capacity to inspire and surprise even the most devoted jazz fans.
Eliciting those reactions is the goal of the Stowe Jazz Festival, which Petit founded in 2017 to celebrate the music — or rather, the language — he’s shaped his life around. If attendees come away happy, and a little bewildered, then he’s done his job.
“People come up to me every year after this festival and say, ‘What is this music?'” Petit, 65, said. “I’m like, ‘It’s jazz.’ It might be jazz the way they hear it and play it and write it in Peru, which is the intention,” he continued. “And they’re like, ‘God, we love this music. It’s not what we expected.’
“Great,” Petit said. “That’s kind of the idea.”
This Friday, August 2, to Sunday, August 4, the festival will bring a mix of international and local performers to the ritzy ski town — all for free. Big-name talents and local favorites will share the spotlight and mingle with the audience between sets, leading to a uniquely community-oriented atmosphere. The only restriction? There will be no blues, folk, hip-hop, jam or other genres allowed onstage. Just pure, raw jazz.
That doesn’t mean the event will suffer a lack of variety. Held at 10 venues around Stowe, Petit’s festival features 30 acts running the gamut from swing and bebop to ethereal Brazilian guitar and funky electric grooves, all under the banner of jazz.
“I make sure that what I program is not only inclusive and varied and diverse, as far as the people are concerned, but the styles are, too,” Petit said.
A guitarist, composer and recording engineer, Petit performed at New York City’s Carnegie Hall at just 8 years old. He’s since toured everywhere from Europe to South America, making valuable connections along the way. So when he started organizing the nonprofit festival, which is mostly funded by grants and roughly 100 sponsors, booking was just a matter of reaching out to folks he had met throughout his career. He said he now receives hundreds of submissions from critically acclaimed artists each year wanting to play in Stowe.
As a result, “the vibe here is incredible,” he said. Players from “the most competitive jazz scenes from all over the world” come to Stowe and “play their butts off to people that [otherwise] would never hear this.”
“People come up to me every year after this festival and say, ‘What is this music?'” George Petit
Petit added that he has a high bar for acceptance to the fest: “You’ve really got to be spectacular.”
Big names on the main stage at the Alchemist brewery this year include Grammy-winning vocalist Nicole Zuraitis, Broadway drummer Jared Schonig, Brazilian guitarist Chico Pinheiro, Toronto saxophonist Andrew Rathbun and Cuban pianist Manuel Valera. Saturday’s headliner is the electric jazz fusion band Forq, led by keyboardist Henry Hey, who has worked with the likes of David Bowie, Rod Stewart and Empire of the Sun.
On Sunday, Civil Disobedience close the festival, performing songs written by major jazz musicians in the 1960s to commemorate the Civil Rights Movement. That material includes songs written in the wake of the 1968 assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., which have only been recently uncovered. The band’s saxophonist, Donny McCaslin — who played alongside Bowie on the late singer’s final album, Blackstar — praised the Stowe festival’s community atmosphere.
“George has done a great job of fostering this … fluid environment, where we can walk out and talk to people in the audience, and to each other, taking in the music,” he said.
“It’s part of our sense of bonding a community together, to be able to look off the main stage and see families with their children,” Petit said. “You don’t get tickets; you just turn up.”
Even so, the festival still appeals to discerning jazz fans.
“What [Petit’s] doing is extremely rare,” local jazz and blues guitarist Paul Asbell said. “It’s high-profile, world-class players that have been carefully curated based on quality.” Asbell’s trio will play three shows during the festival: Friday and Saturday at the Stowe Village Inn and Sunday by the pool at the Outbound Stowe hotel.
He’ll also be part of the festival’s closing show, a rare reunion of the locally legendary Sneakers Jazz Band at the Field Guide Lodge on Sunday. Much of the lineup away from the main stage is similarly homegrown, including psychotropical jazz outfit Guagua, the Bruce Sklar Quintet and the Michael Hartigan Trio.
In recent years, the Vermont music community has criticized the state’s signature jazz showcase, June’s Burlington Discover Jazz Festival, for hosting non-jazz artists and offering fewer opportunities for locals to perform. In contrast, those players seem to feel embraced by the Stowe Jazz Festival.
“George has done a really good job, in my opinion, of curating the best of the people who are local,” Asbell said.
World-renowned trumpeter Ray Vega agrees. He’s a senior lecturer at the University of Vermont and the host of the Vermont Public radio show “Friday Night Jazz.” His fiery, funk-infused Latin jazz ensemble opens the festival with a main stage set on Friday afternoon.
“George goes out of his way to hire local talent,” Vega said. “And I’ll put our musicians here against anybody. We’re good.”
Now all they need is decent weather. Petit recalled that the festival’s first year was beset by an all-too-familiar sight around the Green Mountains in recent summers: rain. But fans made the best of it.
“We had Vermonters dancing in a mosh pit with the rain coming down, which was awesome,” Petit said.
Stowe Jazz Festival, Friday, August 2, through Sunday, August 4, at various locations in Stowe. Free. stowejazzfestival.org
The original print version of this article was headlined “Free Jazz | Big names and local acts converge at the Stowe Jazz Festival”
This article appears in Jul 31 – Aug 6, 2024.
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