2025 Solo Jazz Piano Festival – Friday Headliner Performance

Friday Feature Concert

Welcome to the Vermont Jazz Center’s 9th Solo Jazz Piano Festival. This festival aims to illustrate the wide variety of jazz piano styles and approaches by calling on the pianists themselves to convey their own unique attributes while simultaneously demonstrating their direct link to the continuum of the music’s lineage. The Solo Jazz Piano Festival is one of the cornerstones of the VJC’s programming. To date, the festival has presented sixty of the world’s top pianists, including NEA Jazz Masters Toshiko Akiyoshi and Joanne Brackeen, and acknowledged luminaries Stanley Cowell, Benny Green, Helen Sung, Myra Melford, Sullivan Fortner, Kenny Werner (see back panel for full list). 

Set I
Carmen Staaf
Carmen Staaf is the 2009 winner of the Mary Lou Williams Jazz Piano competition. She is the pianist and Musical Director for NEA Jazz Master Dee Dee Bridgewater. Her past major performances have included the Playboy Jazz Festival in a two-piano setting with Herbie Hancock, Jazz at Lincoln Center with Wynton Marsalis and the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra, and the Kennedy Center alongside Kenny Barron and Fred Hersch. She has presented her music at the Village Vanguard, Blue Note, SFJazz, and major jazz festivals around the world, including the Newport, Monterey, Montreux and North Sea Jazz Festivals. Staaf co-leads the group Science Fair with drummer Allison Miller and is a member of Miller’s Boom Tic Boom. This year, she will release an album of duo pieces featuring performances with Ambrose Akinmusire, John Santos and others. Carmen’s work as a side person includes collaborations with Jennie Scheinman, Allison Miller, Nicole Zuraitis, Dan Pugach, Ayn Inserto, Richie Barshay, Natalie Merchant, Jennifer Wharton’s Bonegasm and many others. Staaf has held faculty positions at Berklee College of Music, the New School, Stanford Jazz Institute, Swarnabhoomi Academy of Music (Chennai, India), Jacob’s Pillow, Litchfield Jazz Camp, and the New York Jazz Academy.

Set II
Johnny O’Neal
Grammy-nominated Johnny O’Neal is a living legend. A former member of Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers, O’Neal has performed with many of the top players of his generation. Highlights of his career include being inducted into the Alabama Jazz Hall of Fame, receiving mentorship and then opening for Oscar Peterson at Carnegie Hall, and performing the part of Art Tatum in the Academy Award-winning 2004 Ray Charles biopic, Ray. Mr. O’Neal has toured or recorded with Dizzy Gillespie, Joe Pass, Lionel Hampton, Kenny Burrell, Sonny Stitt, Benny Golson, Eddie “Lockjaw” Davis, Wycliff Gordon, Harry “Sweets” Edison, Clark Terry, Ray Brown and Milt Jackson. A superb singer himself, he has accompanied Nancy Wilson, Anita O’Day, Sarah Vaughan, Carmen McRae and many others. The Detroit-born O’Neal calls himself “a tune guy.” He explains, “I know 1,500 songs. My father was a pianist and singer who emphasized that learning lyrics creates dynamics and a better interpretation of the melody.” Mr. O’Neal was recently awarded a Jazz Fellowship Award from the Jazz Foundation of America, which “aims to foster a community of musicians approaching the latter stages of their careers…as they continue to explore their creative endeavors.”