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Elkhart Jazz Festival Is Back, And Performers Are Excited

Elkhart Jazz Festival

Last year’s Elkhart Jazz Festival was cancelled due to the pandemic. But now it’s 2021, and with local COVID cases at their lowest levels in a year the festival is happening as normal this weekend.

Tenor saxophonist Kris Brownlee has been a professional jazz musician for 20 years. He’s been performing at the festival since 2012 — except for last year.

 

“Really, 2020 was the year that the music stopped,” Brownlee said. 

 

Brownlee is also the festival’s talent coordinator, and so he said last year’s cancellation wasn’t a shock. But it was still hard.

 

“I’m fortunate enough that I was not too worried about missing shows for the year, I kind of prepared for a rainy day, so to speak,” he said. “I really feel for those musicians that had a tough time, or even worse called it quits over the last year and a half because they weren’t able to make any money.”

 

Clarinetist Dave Bennett agrees. He said the festival is “like family” — he’s been playing there for 18 years, ever since he was 19 years old. 

 

“Emotionally, it pushed all of us to our limits,” Bennett said. “We’d never been through anything like that, and we wondered when or if this was going to get back to normal.”

 

This year, he’s performing every day of the festival and will be showcasing some new songs.

 

“During the pandemic, I basically wrote a new album. We were just in the studio last month cutting it, so we’re going to have a lot of new music to play,” he said. “I tried to make the best of it that I could, and so I just got as creative as I could.”

 

Music is all about muscle memory, and Brownlee said it feels a little weird to be back out performing in public for the first time in 15 months. But he’s prepared and especially excited to see the fans.

 

“They went through the same thing as all of us musicians, being just kind of isolated,” Brownlee said. “And it’s great to give them more sense of normalcy.”

 

Although COVID cases are low, only 30.3 percent of Elkhart County residents are fully vaccinated. Brownlee said the festival is following CDC guidelines — vaccinated people don’t need to wear masks — but is also taking other precautions such as spacing out seating in the Lerner Theater.

 

Brownlee’s five-piece band will be performing on Saturday at 7 p.m. You can also hear him in the 18-piece big band Truth in Jazz on Thursday and backing up pianist Carol Albert on Friday.

 

The Elkhart Jazz Festival runs Thursday, June 17 through Sunday, June 20 in downtown Elkhart. For tickets and a detailed performance schedule, head to elkhartjazzfestival.com.

 

WVPE is a sponsor of the Elkhart Jazz Festival.

 

This story was updated on Friday, June 18.

 

Contact Jakob at jlazzaro@wvpe.org or follow him on Twitter at @JakobLazzaro.

 

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Jakob Lazzaro came to Indiana from Chicago, where he graduated from Northwestern University in 2020 with a degree in Journalism and a double major in History. Before joining WVPE, he wrote NPR's Source of the Week e-mail newsletter, and previously worked for CalMatters, Pittsburgh's 90.5 WESA and North by Northwestern.