Across generations at Litchfield Jazz Festival

The Litchfield Jazz Festival opens its 2026 season on Friday, July 24, at the Frederick Gunn School in Washington, Connecticut. The evening will feature a gala and a concert led by saxophonist Don Braden featuring the Litchfield Jazz Fest Dectet.

The festival began in 1996 and has been going strong ever since. The list of past performers reads like a who’s who of modern jazz greats, including Christian McBride, Soulive, Joshua Redman, Dave Douglas, Brad Mehldau and John Scofield, all of whom helped revive the genre for a new generation of fans at the turn of the millennium. Vocalists like Diana Krall, Dionne Warwick and Dr. John have made appearances as well. And, of course, the festival has been graced by established masters like saxophonists Sonny Rollins and Wayne Shorter; guitarist Bucky Pizzarelli; bassist Rufus Reid; drummers Roy Haynes and Tito Puente; the Preservation Hall Jazz Band; and pianists Dave Brubeck and local legend Ahmad Jamal.

Jamal, who died in April 2023 at his home in Ashley Falls, Massachusetts at the age of 92, was a pioneering jazz pianist. His minimalist style inspired generations of jazz greats, including Miles Davis, who wrote in his autobiography that Jamal “knocked me out with his concept of space, his lightness of touch, his understatement, and the way he phrased notes, chords and passages,” and is widely cited as saying, “All my inspiration comes from Ahmad Jamal.”

Jamal’s performance came at the inaugural festival back in 1996, one year before the Litchfield Performing Arts nonprofit group undertook its next serious foray into the genre by opening the Litchfield Jazz Camp. Now celebrating its 30th anniversary, the camp has been an incubator for enthusiastic jazz musicians of all ages. Vita Muir, founder and executive/artistic director of Litchfield Performing Arts since its founding in 1981, said the youngest camper was 9 years old, while the oldest was in his 80s. Today, more than 300 students attend the camp as boarders or day campers during its four weeklong sessions. The goal is to make each camper become a better version of themselves through jazz, camaraderie, confidence-building and other intangible methods.

The jazz world used to have a strong built-in mentorship mentality. Younger players would get picked up by more experienced musicians to play with their bands. John Coltrane famously played with Miles Davis before striking out on his own. But today, with fewer and fewer jazz performance spaces, that pattern of mentorship has drastically subsided. The camp works in part to rebuild that tradition. “First the teachers hire the students, then the students hire the teachers,” stated Muir in a recent interview.

That relationship between the camp and the festival will be in the spotlight Friday night following the opening gala. Led by Don Braden, the Litchfield Jazz Fest Dectet features musicians who have deep connections to the camp as students, teachers or both, including drummer Anton Kot, a recipient of Juilliard’s Tito Puente Scholarship Award.

At its essence, of course, the festival is about great jazz. In that spirit, a dizzying lineup of contemporary greats will take the stage throughout the weekend, including the Steve Davis Sextet, the Paul Bollenback Quintet and the Curtis Brothers Trio on Saturday, as well as the Steve Kortyka Sextet on Sunday.

For a full schedule and tickets, visit litchfieldjazzfest.com