08/06/2025
👏🏻🎶
Hi -
NO...I am not going to ask you for money. :) With your help, we made it happen - again.
A couple of days following the festival I had to travel to the UK on family business, not taking my computer along for the ride; we returned last night, so this is my first real opportunity to post here on behalf of The Stowe Jazz Festival...in some detail.
To try (!) to thank all of the folks that - year after year - have made SJF a reality would be impossible - truly. If I include all the lodging partners, the restaurants and bars, the small businesses, the Angels, the musicians, the Volunteers (over 60 of you!), our Board, the 'team captains', all the folks at Vermont Community Foundation or Vermont Women's Fund...the food donors, the vendors...we'd be up well over 200 individuals that - together - have built Stowe Jazz Festival for 9 years now. Ours is a unique event that has drawn international praise, over 120 musicians each year from dozens of countries, multi-Grammy award winners...with a Vision and Mission that has been INCREDIBLY difficult to sustain. The ideals that we support - equality, parity, community strength...these are part of our fabric, and part of our intention when I started this and asked friends to work with me. We proved that these concepts are heart-felt and valid this past year in our focused support for Women in Jazz...
And yet - our Mission and Vision continue to be valid - and continue to draw support from those that understand and selflessly support out of the belief that such an event, such a festival can operate and thrive - and grow - while serving our community and the Arts...without a profit motive. Bringing people together through music.
In 2016, we tried to outline a strategy that would break the rules of such 'jazz' festivals and other events. Some folks really got their fur ruffled...and continue to believe that we should 'charge for parking' or some other element of SJF. Or tickets and cover charges...and that, my friends would simply make us the same as ... everyone else. And if you know me personally, I am just NOT that guy. Wasn't it Steve Jobs that inferred that no one needs a 13th Google?
So. To all of the partners, supporters, donors, artists, volunteers, Angels, individual believers, lodging partners...to EVERYONE in the audiences at all our venues...from the MainStage to Trapps to Field Guide to The Alchemist to Cork, to Piecasso, to Doc's, to Outbound, to Stowe Village Inn...to the Town of Stowe and the Select Board - to the Police Department...Parks and Rec...to ALL OF YOU.
THANK YOU.
In the meantime - cheers...see you 'round the campus as it were...
George
