9th Annual Solo Jazz Piano Festival 2025
April 18 @ 7:30 pm - April 19 @ 10:00 pm
At this celebration of solo piano in the jazz tradition, a collaborative spirit imbues the presentations of four distinguished headliners. The Festival includes performances, master-classes, a Q+A session plus interviews with the artists.
2025 headliners include Sean Mason, Carmen Staaf, Johnny O’Neal, and Luther Allison.
For all music lovers, not just pianists, who are interested in both the practical and spiritual aspects of jazz and improvised music. We will hear six brilliant pianists (4 headliners and 2 emerging artists) perform and discuss their relationship to the instrument, to the jazz lineage, to structure and to artistic freedom. The piano is a finely crafted instrument that has been improved upon over the past three hundred years. It has been called “the orchestra of all instruments” because it gives musicians simultaneous access to harmonic, melodic and rhythmical possibilities, all with a refined sense of dynamics and touch.
In the Solo Jazz Piano Festival you will experience the myriad ways that artists who have invested their lives in the piano relate with the instrument. Since the festival started, in 2017, the VJC has hosted 54 pianists including NEA Jazz Masters Joanne Brackeen and Toshiko Akiyoshi. Other well-known musicians who have participated in the festival include Stanley Cowell, Helen Sung, Sullivan Fortner, Benny Green, Aaron Parks, Jacky Terrason, Sullivan Fortner and many others. In this year’s festival, each headliner will offer a masterclass and perform a 50 minute concert, emerging artists will perform 25 minute sets, and all pianists will come together for a lively panel discussion. All events will take place at the Vermont Jazz Center and will be livestreamed.
The VJC Solo Piano Festival was inspired by the donation of a Steinway Concert Grand piano by the McKenzie Family Charitable Trust. The VJC is extremely grateful to the Trust for this inspiring instrument, it continues to serve as a vehicle for artists to seamlessly transform their personalities and energy into musical sound and communicate directly with audiences.
SCHEDULE TO BE ANNOUNCED
