BRATTLEBORO-The Emerging Artist Festival (EAF) is one of the cornerstones of the Vermont Jazz Center's programming. Now in its eighth year, the EAF takes place during the first weekend of November.
Headlining this year's festival will be three-time Grammy Award-winning drummer, Ulysses Owens, who will be joined by a group of rising stars he calls the Generation Y Band, featuring Anthony Hervey (trumpet), Langston Hughes II (saxophones and flute), Liya Grigoryan (piano), and Guillermo Lopez on bass.
Fundamental to EAF's mission is participation by local student groups, who will perform during Gallery Walk at 118 Elliot Street on Friday, Nov. 7, and at the Vermont Jazz Center during the day on Saturday, Nov. 8.
Confirmed ensembles so far include groups from Vermont Academy, Pioneer Valley Performing Arts Charter School, Brattleboro Union High School, Northfield Mount Hermon, the VJC Youth Jazz Ensemble, the University of Massachusetts Amherst, the Samadhi Mathes Quartet, and Emily Margaret's exciting new band.
Other features of the festival include a clinic for all ages and an evening concert for the public with Ulysses Owens and Generation Y.
All Friday and Saturday daytime activities for the EAF are open to the public and free (donations are appreciated). Owens and Generation Y's concert at the VJC's performance space is a ticketed event.
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Owens is a jazz educator at the highest level. He is the Small Ensemble director at The Juilliard School and the artistic director for Don't Miss a Beat, his family's Florida-based nonprofit organization that provides free after-school resources in the arts.
In a conversation with the Bottom of the Bill podcast, Owens described the arts as "the bridge to a better life; we believe that by introducing kids to the arts, [it helps them] develop."
"I always say it's my life's work and being an artistic director changes how I do everything," he said.
While Owens will be joined in his clinic at the Vermont Jazz Center by the Generation Y Ensemble, he's also likely to call on area youth to join him on the stage. Owens's workshops emphasize the importance of rhythm for all musicians, not just drummers and bassists. They also emphasize the significance of deep listening and illustrate how each musician in an ensemble contributes to a group's energy and sound.
In a 2020 clinic for the Artist in Resonance program at the Timucua Arts Foundation, Owens said: "To me one of the things that makes jazz really special is connectivity. Once we are all fulfilling our roles in this music then we connect with each other, and that's when the magic comes in."
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Owens was selected as Jazz Drummer of 2024 by Modern Drummer readers' poll and is among those pictured on the cover of the magazine's December issue that year. He also won Drumeo's 2024 Jazz Drummer of the Year award.
He was recently inducted into the Jacksonville Music Heritage Park Walk of Fame and selected as Rising Star Jazz Drummer of the Year by the 2025 DownBeat Readers' Poll. He has released seven albums as a bandleader, including two as a big band leader.
He is a frequent performer at Jazz at Lincoln Center and appears on dozens of recordings. He has published three books: Jazz Brushes for the Modern Drummer, Jazz Big Band for the Modern Drummer, and The Musician's Career Guide. He has presented clinics throughout the world.
Owens is a member of the Abyssinian Baptist Church, where he first learned how to play the drums. In an interview with Jazz Talk from 2021, he described growing up in an environment of preachers and evangelists in the church where his mother was choir director.
"By the time I was eight or nine I was the drummer for the whole church. I had the youth choir, I was playing for three adult choirs, I played for all the revivals. […] When I told my mother that I didn't feel like going to church she said to me 'you want to let down the choir and so-and-so and so-and-so?' So, I understood that my role as a drummer was important, but furthermore the responsibility and the blessing behind being a drummer at such a young age for such a large ministry was great, and it helped me to really take things very seriously early on."
Owens frequently acknowledges his faith and collaborated with Wynton Marsalis in a forum, "Exploring the Intersection of Jazz and Spirituality." In reviewing Owens's recording Soul Conversations, Bobby E. Davis Jr. of Black Grooves states that Owens' music "is full of exhilarating and breathtaking tunes that will have you on your feet dancing at some moments and thinking critically about the state of the world in others."
The Generation Y Band is a concept that Owens brought to fruition in 2019. Using this group as his primary performance vehicle, he has achieved his goal of promoting the next generation of talent. To form his bands, Owens gleans the best musicians from the top music conservatories in New York City.
This model was proven numerous times in the history of our music. Owens' Generation Y is an updated model of Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers, and Betty Carter's Jazz Ahead Program at the Kennedy Center. Both artists were renowned for their own bands that launched the careers of many paradigm-shifting musicians.
In a podcast with Bite Size Jazz, Owens reflected: "I think that the biggest thing that we can do in jazz right now is to have an intergenerational focus.
"I think that what we've lacked, unlike other industries, is that in our effort […] to keep the tradition of our heroes alive, the spirit of the greats before us, we sometimes don't fully affirm and involve the younger generation. […] I think the best of everything and anything is when you have all voices represented."
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This season's iteration of Owens's Generation Y Band is made up primarily of musicians from Generation Z (born between 1997 and 2012). Performing on trumpet will be Anthony Hervey, who has been called "a beautiful trumpet player of the first magnitude" by Wynton Marsalis.
Hervey has performed and recorded with the Lincoln Center Big Band, the Mingus Big Band, Christian McBride, Jon Batiste, and Michael Bublé. Hervey appeared at the VJC last May with Endea Owens.
Saxophonist Langston Hughes II has toured with Wynton Marsalis and the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra and performed with Rufus Reid, Jazzmeia Horn, Orrin Evans, and Nat Adderley Jr.
Armenian-born pianist Liya Grigoryan was a 2018 finalist in the Thelonious Monk International Jazz Competition. She was a featured artist on Live from Emmet's Place and has performed and toured with Dick Oatts, Gary Smulyan, John Clayton, Justin DiCioccio, Theo Croker, and others.
Bassist Guillermo Lopez won first prize (the Scott LaFaro Prize) in the International Society of Bassists Double Bass Competition in 2025. He has performed with Willie Jones III, Carlos Averhoff Jr., Alexa Torres, Ed Soph, and many others.
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Admission to the in-person event is offered on a sliding fee scale beginning at $25. Tickets can be purchased at vtjazz.org or by calling 802-254-9088, ext. 1. The online streaming of this concert is offered by donation and are just a click away. Please give generously and support live music. For more information or to access the livestream, visit vtjazz.org.
Eugene Uman is director of the Vermont Jazz Center. The Commons' Deeper Dive column gives artists, arts organizations, and other nonprofits elbow room to write in first person and be unabashedly opinionated, passionate, and analytical about their own creative work and events.
This Arts column was submitted to The Commons.