By Christian Kallen
The Healdsburg Jazz Festival, embedded in the fabric of Healdsburg’s musical identity since before the turn of the millennium, has long attempted to emphasize that it’s not just a summer festival but a year-round one. As well as occasional concerts at local theaters or wineries, the organization lines up weekly jazz combos at the Hotel Healdsburg’s Spirit Bar, and has a robust youth education program as well.
But that 10-days-in-June, 26-year-old Healdsburg Jazz Festival has a magnetic hold all the same. Expanding beyond the “festival” identity has always been the challenge, so much so that the organization has made an effort to brand itself “Healdsburg Jazz,” dropping the Festival from its name (healdsburgjazz.org).
The latest effort is an upcoming four-day, six-show event at a variety of venues both indoors and out in midwinter Healdsburg. It’s been optimistically dubbed the Healdsburg Winter Jazz Festival.
The nonprofit’s current executive director, Gayle Okumura Sullivan, pitched the idea of a winter festival to balance the June event. Rather than an extravagant week-plus series of concerts large and small at restaurants, wineries and stages throughout north county, the inaugural Healdsburg Jazz Winter Fest consists of just four curated days of jazz at more intimate places in town.
“The idea came from Gayle, our executive director, because we had been for years trying to create a year-round concert and programming format,” said Marcus Shelby, the dynamic musical director of the organization, who helped line up the talent for the mini-fest.
“It’s taking the opportunity of concert performances and bringing in national and local artists for four days, sort of an action-packed four evenings of music,” he added with a laugh.
Concerts Daily
The Healdsburg Jazz Winter Festival runs from Thursday, Jan. 30, to Sunday, Feb. 2, with shows at the Paul Mahder Gallery, Spoonbar, Montage, the Michel-Schlumberger winery—even St. Paul’s Catholic Church, where Stella Heath’s tribute to Ella Fitzgerald will take place Saturday afternoon. (Heath performs locally year-round, but this Feb. 1 show is already sold out.)
At the other extreme, the finale with MacArthur Genius Award-winner Jason Moran will be a salute-to-Duke Ellington concert, to be held at Montage Healdsburg’s expansive ballroom, which will be dressed to the nines for this Sunday, Feb. 2, 7pm show. (Moran and Marcus Shelby’s orchestra will combine talents in another Ellington tribute at SFJazz the following weekend, Feb. 6-9.)
Bringing music to town that jazz fans want to hear is one reason for the midwinter festival, but there’s another purpose as well: keeping its sponsors happy. Especially the Piazza Hospitality group, whose hotels have played such a key role in Healdsburg Jazz’s success since the beginning.
“We heard feedback from attendees, musicians and our partners like the Hotel Healdsburg/h2hotel, Montage and wineries,” Sullivan said. “If we can bring joy and live music to Healdsburg in the heart of the off-season winter months, we thought we should do it.”
Circe Sher, co-owner of Piazza, said, “We already have guests planning to attend, and it’s a great time of year to bring some musical energy to town.”
Spoonbar
Though not participating directly in this winter’s festival, Hotel Healdsburg does benefit weekly from the jazz programming in the Spirit Bar (including the Winter Fest Saturday, when the Susan Sutton Trio will play). Only one of the Piazza Hospitality venues is being called into duty this time—the Spoonbar’s Green Room, on the ground floor of H2Hotel.
In many ways, though, the Friday concerts (there are two, at 6pm and 8pm) will be the centerpiece of this inaugural festival showcasing the vocal genius of Paula West. Performing with the semi-legendary vocalist will be Adam Shulman (piano), Aaron Germain (bass) and Leon Joyce Jr. (drums), who will join her in exploring her current repertoire of material—an intriguing one, to say the least, in that it includes works by Sonny Bono, Jimmy Webb and the Rolling Stones.
“At this time of political upheaval and division, Paula West looks back to these uniquely American expressions of passion and protest with humor, swing, and romance – showing them to be as relevant today as the day they were written,” the Jazz Fest website proclaims.
Familiar Address
Two of the events will be held at the Paul Mahder Gallery, whose 222 Healdsburg Ave. address is shared by an unaffiliated performance nonprofit. These include the opening-night show on Thursday, Jan. 30, with Venezuelan-born pianist/composer Edward Simon and his longtime collaborators, bassist Reuben Rogers and drummer Adam Cruz. The trio will work what they call “the Latin American songbook,” the source for much of Simon’s recent recordings.
The other Paul Mahder Gallery show, on Saturday night, takes a different approach. “All of our shows have a certain intimacy to them,” Shelby said. “Our jazz party is a little bit different.” That program will be a “four-hour extravaganza of different artists in the spirit of the Harlem of the West,” with every musician in town for the winter festival and then some, exchanging ideas, tunes and laughs.
In the spirit of the ’40s and ’50s in San Francisco’s Fillmore District, then known as the Harlem of the West, the jam sessions are designed to evoke the free-spirited creative spark that kindled jazz in its heyday. The fun starts at 6pm on Saturday night.
The Sunday noon show, with vibraharpist Sasha Berliner and pianist Paul Cornish, is a chance to unwind in the open air, enjoying fresh new talent at the stunning Michel-Schlumberger Wine Estate off West Dry Creek Road. This, too, could be a bargain memory: The $78 ticket includes half a wood-fired pizza and a glass of sparkling wine, as well as these innovative young musicians.
Shelby spoke with us after just returning from a music publishing convention in New York, where he saw that “the music and the desire for live music is still very much alive.” Healdsburg Jazz continues to believe in that dream, and make it a reality in the little town by the Russian River.
Details about the Healdsburg Jazz Winter Fest, including ticket links and program information, can be found at healdsburgjazz.org.
