i have mentioned maybe there are more but this is what i know yeah i mean there's not a lot of time but you know it's one of those things that i have a passion for music it's kind of one of those things i've heard a lot of musicians say definitely funny story but i actually really wanted to play french horn when i started playing my instruments i started through my school i grew up in st johnsbury in the northeast kingdom and elvis music provided the instruments and they sent home a list and you had to pick one and i had chosen french horn and i took it to my mom and i said mama mom i really want to play french horn and on the list it was the most expensive to read and she said that's the most expensive pick another one you know and so i remember going ok i guess i'll play saxophone so i really i think it's a funny story because it was really jazz music is what really changed the way i think about my and so for me love music so for me it was just so funny that instinctually i wasn't choosing the saxophone but later it's what really got me into music so and i love you now i love it now i can't get enough you know i heard my first john coltrane ballads album say modern instrumentalists joshua redman inspired me a lot when i was in high school and he had a nice mix for me between you know a modern player and a blues player and i thought he always thought he had a lot of soul so he really spoke to me too and now you know pretty much anyone i can't name now i love dexter gordon he's somebody that i kind of came into later in my playing career but he's been around forever and i love chris potter i love kenny the year oh it was so great ray is amazing and he's such a we're so lucky to have him in our community i think he's one of those guys that a lot of people might not realize you know he's toured with some serious serious guys i santa maria and his own quintet so just to be able to play in the same room with ray's great he is and he educates and he runs a rehearsal just like the great jazz guys do you know so it's really great to before i became the director of the festival i was working alongside jay craven in the northeast can know he had started a performance series there and he needed somebody to really run production in and basically make everything happened and i had known jay from when i was in high school for many years ago and i told him i moved back so we kind of teamed up and he hired me to help run run that so i was doing that before and then i would take two weeks off of work every year and go work for the festival and it was just one of those agreements that jay and i had because he knew i was a huge jazz fan and i just always wanted to be a part of the festival so yeah so i had been there i think i've been working for the festivals my fifth year so really second year as director we've ever done and even more free stuff which is what we're probably most proud of it would be doing these again these year it'll be ten days and we're going to shoot for it and you know last year we did one hundred twenty four of dance in ten days so we're going to shoot for that if not more and one hundred of those are always free so i think a lot of people don't realize that but it's like if you come to burlington and you come down to there's music starting at noon and it goes until eight thirty and then a lot of the clubs in the restaurants have music too in addition to all of our ticket events so we have a lot of really great ticket events which are the big names you know that draw people in but we also have tons of free stuff happening so i was just tell people you know come down spend the day you can hear five bands most of them are from vermont so you know richmond comes i know we have middlebury all the burlington inch and county places but so if you if your kids in a high school band it's amazing experience and you can go watch those kids i mean i did that when i was in high school i have a soft spot for it i remember driving from st johnsbury and coming to burlington and playing on the stage and just being so excited that i got to play during the discover jazz festival so i think it's a really cool thing and i still meet people who are my age or older who come up to me and say i played on church street when i was in high school and it was amazing and so it's such a great program we really love to do it because i know it really sticks with people it's like you get to bennett he's won i think his credentials are his you know his his resume is crazy but he's won seventeen grammys he's also won the lifetime achievement award for the grammys dozens of his records of gone platinum you know and we all know i left my heart in san francisco and stuff and what do you mean we owe it he's a great house like he was here and i think two thousand and nine for the quad and everybody keeps telling me this amazing story about how at one point he does drop the mike and sing acoustic in the hall just to show everybody that he's still got it you know and he kind of says ok i'm just going to take i'm going to drop the mike and i'm going to i'm going to sing you guys a song you know so we're very excited about having him he's a you know that type of style of music went out of fashion but he's like stayed relevant for all these years so i mean want to own an amazing man so he's our big headliner and then we have a lot of other great bands the opening weekend we have a album with the moanin which i think you know even if you're not a jazz fan people still have that record you know you know that track they know that you know and he was playing tenor on that and he's a great writer and brian carter was you know part of ron carter himself has been on twenty five hundred recordings i read on his i does but they own eyes and then how do you find time for all that he's been he's probably the most recorded bass player ever so he's incredible and we're really excited new orleans we have mardi gras music we saw some oh yes so he's like he's doing the full mardi gras celebration to him and his band are bringing the full feather cost to you so i don't know if you've ever seen those before but they're just a full body of of right vibrant color of feathers like coming from the top all the way all the way down your body and it's you know doing classic new orleans music and dancing so i would be playing a friend but he's going to be in the f yeah it's amazing and he's i mean he's new orleans royalty like he's the guy that a group a bunch of people wait outside his house for him to come out and then they do their own parade so it's like this this thing's starts to happen where hundreds of people are just waiting outside donald harrison's house and they wait for him to emerge and then they do their own per raid zone i mean he really is the big chief you know people really respect him and see him as out as an ok and he was also a messenger so we have a couple are bloody messengers and he was in it with terence blanchard and that in that era so they've both really come up and become great players in their own people went through the he's you know first generation puerto rico in the bronx and helped really build that latin jazz sound so you know he's one of the original pioneers and he's actually an any a jazz master too so we've got three of them  and she's an emerging singer she's twenty three but she sounds like one of the classic singers from you know the golden era was billie holiday and sarah vaughn and ella fitzgerald so she really has this color to her voice that i think people are going to find really familiar and they're really going to say wow like you know she's twenty three but she sounds like she's so much older in when marcellus just kind of picked her up and she's been doing a lot of dates with the jazz at lincoln center orchestra great and but i do if people have a chance to catch her on you tube i mean when she sings she's really telling you a story so there's a line in the song that's funny she'll she'll sing it in a funny way you know she's really telling you a story when she sings so i think that show's going to be extremely popular and she's already she's in the flynn space which is our small space and she's already sold half of her tickets does like  yeah it's and it's going to be an exceptional show because i know in a few years she says she's not going to be playing the small venues anymore so and she's already sold half of half of the tickets so i say if you really want to see her you want to get your tickets now he's definitely going to there's there's not much it's going to look different in terms of what we're doing so but yeah like you mentioned some of our premiere of events are exceptional long trail live which helps kick off the festival the first friday it's all free music from seven thirty to midnight on the marketplace and we put up three stages and long trail hosts the whole thing and people can walk up and down church street hear live music until midnight it's really special and then the next day which will be based thirty first we do being job or all day in the park which is twelve to five so this is really exciting because it's while a farmer's markets going so a lot of people go and get their lunch at the farmer's market and then hang out in city hall park and watch the and both the nectars and say no kitchen shows this year are going to be outstanding i'm just not allowed to sit there yet so you know that's why i always tell people i keep checking our website because every couple weeks we add more shows and we announce more things because we're still confirming right now so like i just found out a couple days ago what those shows are so we're preparing it to announce it thing but you know where it's it's going to be great and there's something for everybody so i always say like just go on our website and if you're looking for something that's really for your family or if you want to go you know go have dinner and go to a fancy show there or something for you there and we also have our waterfront park shows which this year we have macy oh parker on that thursday down in the water in vermont which you know i would say they had their heyday probably about fifteen or twenty years ago and they have a huge new england following and since then the band has kind of spread out and moved all the way to oregon and california and so we're bringing everybody back together for a big reunion show and that's going to be the saturday so they're going to play jen hart's big band is going to play and cabaret and the a strong you know presence some of our great talent and we also feature a lot of great local bands outside so i think i have you know thirty five or forty spots outside that are all for vermont bands so we have all erotic influence yeah there was a great show oh it's yeah and i do good play i am not going to play i played a couple years ago during the festival and then i vowed i would never do that again because it was it was hard to make it to the gang and then and you know it was hard to you know not answer my phone and a few other things you know there's always a crisis happening during the festival and i just day that the five yeah it does and it's you know it's just one of those things of it doesn't seem like a big deal to show up and play a gig but you know your phone's ringing in there like we got to go on stage and i'm like well i got to deal with this issue you know a little bit so you know you'd be amazed the festival life is very hectic during those ten days and i just try to find at least a little bit of time each day where i can go check out some music and and hope how many millions of forms of jazz we're going to have in our beautiful berlin tone city the queen city of the green mountain state this is a celebration of a group of people it's about community it's not about  this community loves this event and you know we are so thankful for that obviously our lives what i love is it's open mindedness to try new things to check new things out the whole concept i've discovered jazz is that thrill of discovery we all are encouraged to try something a little outside our comfort zone and i've really seen people grow i see myself grow changing for braiding different influences at the festival started by several of vermont jazz artists saying we should have a festival they wanted more games but they also wanted more of a run for it so lay could have more takers and they came up with this weekend discover jazz festival started we've been in grabs with the jazz community in vermont for gosh thirty some odd years