Sticking with the original intent to honor the 50th anniversary of Earth Day in 2020 with the theme “think globally, act locally,” the Town of Duck is back with its 14th annual jazz music festival after a two-year break due to health and safety concerns. The Duck Jazz Festival Presented by PNC was postponed in 2020 and 2021, but organizers and the Duck community at large are gearing up for its grand return on October 8 and 9, eager to share in two days of jazz music and education and carry on the original Earth Day-inspired theme.
Comprised of two main events, the Duck Jazz Festival is a weekend full of good fun, good music and good eats, all of which are proudly sponsored by the local community. Saturday night will feature the inaugural concert from the La Fiesta Latin Jazz Quintet, a group hailing from the Triangle and led by Dr. Gregg Gelb, who is also the leader of the Triangle Youth Jazz Ensemble, an alumnus of the festival. As a music educator, Gelb designs their interactive performances to introduce listeners to African and Latin jazz sounds and history and will be using their Saturday evening show to talk about these various influences from around the world as well as what influences their specific sound.
As per tradition, one artist or group from the festival will be holding an educational workshop for the local high school jazz band students, which this year will be done by the La Fiesta Latin Jazz Quintet. Throughout the week leading up to the festival, the Town of Duck will also be hosting a variety of community events and activities, including an outdoor showing of the movie Soul and a jazz-themed story time and rhythm play. Sunday morning, at promptly 10 a.m., the gates will open and the all-day event of the Duck Jazz Festival will begin.
La Fiesta Latin Jazz Quintet
“Our performers vary kind of widely. We always try to offer various jazz sounds during the festival because everybody likes something different,” says Town of Duck events director Christian Legner. “We have some hometown artists and also people from all over the world.”
One of the international jazz voices in this year’s roster is Banda Magda, a New York-based outfit whose sound mixes and meshes influences from around the world, featuring songs in French, Greek and English. Members from Banda Magda have roots from all around the world including Greece, Japan, Argentina, Colombia, Brazil, Turkey, Israel and England. Banda Magda has a background in and passion for education through the exploration of different musical cultures as well as sustainability and global consciousness that they will weave together during their performance.
Describing their sound as “Syrian heart and Midwest soul,” Bassel & The Supernaturals is another featured band that uses their soulful, funk-inspired music to tell the stories of migration, conflict, love and heritage, their string-heavy Chicago jazz melodies soundtracking their lyrics of resilience and lived experience. Bassel & The Supernaturals is committed to building a better and brighter future for young musicians all around the world through philanthropy and education.
Banda Magda
Another group performing on Saturday will be the John Jorgenson Quintet, heralded for their pioneering, string-driven swing sound influenced by Latin, Romanian, Greek, classical and rock music. As usual, this year’s line-up also boasts several accomplished local jazz musicians who live or grew up here, such as trumpet player and Manteo High School alumnus Eric Williams with the Modern Jazztet and guitarist and First Flight High School alumnus Devin Frazier.
Along with the blending of international and local sounds, a priority of the Duck Jazz Festival is education in regards to the music itself and how we engage with our environment. Because of the immediacy of the natural world here on the Outer Banks, we’re in an actionable position to think globally and act locally with respect to our environment and ecosystem – we can actually see the litter we leave behind on our beaches and public spaces float out into the ocean. “The things that you do make a difference everywhere,” says Legner.
For the Duck Jazz Festival, making a difference means taking extra steps to ensure that our love for live music isn’t doing more harm than good. “These kinds of festivals often produce a lot of waste, so we’re going to work really hard to show people that we can make some simple changes and that there are simple changes they can make too,” says Legner. “Everyone does only what they can to be greener, but even doing a little bit really makes a difference.”
Bassel and the Supernaturals
One of the lengths that the organizers are going to includes a green travel certification, which requires the event to take special measures to reduce waste and emissions. This includes having recycling available on-site that will be monitored by volunteers to avoid any cross-contamination with the garbage, staying away from single-use plastic throughout all aspects of the event, giving priority to vendors who use and value sustainable practices and encouraging the sale of aluminum and glass beverage containers only.
“We sourced merchandise to sell at the event that has some type of green or recycled component, like our t-shirt this year that will be made of recycled polyester. We’ll also have some giveaways of sustainable items from some of our sponsors, things like reusable drink vessels and stainless steel straws,” says Legner. “We’ll be trying to focus on showing that these things can be done greener and that we’re working hard to reduce our footprint.”
Music, like our natural environment, is a tangible element of our everyday life that can broaden the scope of our thoughts and actions from the local to the global. Legner explains, “When I was planning this theme, the first thing I thought about was having these sounds from all over the world. They may sound different and they may look different, but they’re still jazz. We can have different opinions, different sounds, they can be from different parts of the world, but they can come together for music.”
John Jorgenson Quintet
In both theme and action, at the heart of this year’s Duck Jazz Festival is an aim to continue to imagine our Outer Banks community as open-minded and inclusive through the vehicle of music and build a sustainable future for us all.
If you want to spend a few hours helping out and get yourself a free meal, a t-shirt and a prime spot on the lawn in return, get in touch with volunteer coordinator Betsy Trimble for more info at btrimble@townofduck.com or (252) 255-1234.
For all the information you need about Duck Jazz Festival, click here.
