BRATTLEBORO-The Vermont Jazz Center (VJC), one of many bright stars on the area arts scene, is a bit of a wonder: In a town of 12,000 people, a world-class jazz venue offers 11 major concerts a year and ample learning opportunities year-round for all ages of jazz learners, players, and lovers.
The Commons spoke recently with the VJC’s director, Eugene Uman, about the 2026-27 season, which starts this month and runs through June.
The shaping of each season, Uman explains, has grown over the nearly 30 years since he and his wife, artist and VJC Co-Director Elsa Borrero, arrived on the scene.
“We met this wonderful community that surrounded [VJC founder and renowned guitarist Attila Zoller] and we played with the very best musicians from all of New York — around the world, actually,” Uman says.
After Zoller’s death in 1998, “we started just connecting with people he knew,” he adds.
Gratefully, Uman says, “I’ve been able to network and communicate with the musicians as well as the agents and managers of these musicians.”
A musician himself, he says “I know what I’m looking for in terms of quality and style: I’m always looking for people that present the very best music,” seeking artists in a diversity of styles and music “that pushes the boundaries a little bit, so there’s a little bit of cutting edge-ness to it.”
Each VJC concert is planned with balance in mind, Uman explains. Looking at a full season lineup he notes “each of these concerts shows a different side of jazz that to me is a way to give people an education about what this music is and why it can be something that’s both intellectually stimulating [and] enjoyable.
“I really feel like this season is over the top” with high quality music and “a smorgasbord of styles that’s really intriguing.”
The season starts Saturday, Sept. 19 with Gonzalo Rubalcaba, who offers “a cutting edge in terms of Cuban music combined with jazz,” Uman shares.
A Grammy Award-winning artist, Rubalcaba, as described in VJC promotional materials, uses “Afro-Cuban traditions with extraordinary technique [and] has established himself as one of the most creative forces in the jazz world.”
The second concert, on Saturday, Oct. 17, will be the African Rhythms Sextet with drummer Billy Hart, in a tribute to renowned pianist and composer Randy Weston, “a really important musician who combined African music with jazz,” Uman adds.
Following a U.S. State Department tour to Morocco, Weston “fell in love with” the country and its people and, with a direct connection to the region, he authentically fused “those rhythms of North Africa with the rhythms of jazz,” he continues.
Since Weston’s death in 2018, his group has continued playing his signature fusion of African musical traditions with jazz.
The Emerging Artist Festival (EAF) this year is set for Friday and Saturday, Nov. 6 and 7, and features award-winning Elena Ayodele Pinderhughes. Recognized as a leading flutist of her generation who has played with the likes of Herbie Hancock, she’s also a vocalist, composer, and songwriter who’s said to traverse genres gracefully.
In its ninth year, the EAF will showcase six student groups performing at 118 Elliott during that Friday’s Gallery Walk. On Saturday, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., student groups will play at the VJC’s Cotton Mill home. Pinderhughes and her ensemble will then offer a clinic before their Saturday night show.
The Dec. 4 VJC Big Band Gala, with vocalist Charenee Wade, will celebrate its 22nd year. A benefit for the VJC’s Scholarship Fund, the 17-piece band will focus this year on the music of Sarah Vaughan and Ella Fitzgerald using, as much as possible, says Uman, “authentic arrangements.”
Wade has performed widely and teaches at both the Juilliard School and the Johns Hopkins Peabody Institute’s conservatory. Uman recalls how, when she led vocal workshops for the VJC over the last couple years, “the students fell in love with her immediately.”
With local connections to Vermont’s high school district jazz festival and to Julie Ackerman-Hovis, who teaches at both the Brattleboro Music Center and Brattleboro Union High School, Wade was the obvious first pick to hold the soloist spot, says Uman, who reports that, when she was asked to participate, she responded, “Of course I sing Big Band, of course I love it.”
Two saxophone concerts will start the new year: David Sánchez will play on Saturday, Jan. 16, 2027 and Joe Lovano, Saturday, Feb. 13, 2027.
“These two musicians are world class and remarkably different,” says Uman.
Both are Grammy Award winning performers “recognized by the jazz community as creative individuals who’ve really developed their own voices,” he says. And each, Uman notes, “demonstrates a different perspective of the same instrument” with a “completely different lineage.”
On Saturday, March 20, 2027, pianist/composer Aaron Parks and his band, Little Big, will perform.
Parks’ works “create new environments,” Uman says. “He’s a meditative person who really explores how sound can evoke the environment, so his music is like going for a walk in the forest or being at the seashore and feeling the essence of the waves.”
Parks is able to “capture the sounds of the environment in his music and it becomes almost visual because you’re hearing the sound, you’re feeling the energy of the natural world,” Uman continues.
Stéphane Wrembel will play on Saturday, April 3, 2027 as a benefit for the Windham County Heat Fund. Wrembel, according to the VJC, “grew up in France, fascinated by the music and culture of the Sinti, jazz manouche (Gypsy-style) guitarists. He spent countless hours visiting those camps, learning the authentic style from its true source, leading him directly to the music of Django Reinhardt.”
For the last few years, Uman says, at the urging of Richard Davis, the fund’s co-leader and VJC volunteer, the VJC has offered this benefit at a ”time of great need in our community to raise money” that helps “provide oil and gas to people who can’t afford it.”
The annual Solo Jazz Piano Festival slated for Friday and Saturday, April 16 and 17 promises, according to the VJC, “a celebration of solo jazz piano [in which] four distinguished headliners and two emerging artists present performances, master classes, and a panel discussion. These pianists demonstrate a wide variety of styles and approaches and are some of the top players in the world.”
Uman adds, “the mission of the Festival is to celebrate this great instrument — called the orchestra of all instruments. The violins and the trumpets in the high register and the trombones and basses in the low register. And because we have 10 fingers, we can play multiple voices at the same time” and showcase the Steinway concert grand piano given 13 years ago to the VJC by a “wonderful benefactor whom many people know in the community, Mike McKenzie.”
The structure of that weekend, which “we’ve fine-tuned for the last 11 years, really works. And people keep coming back. We’ve presented 66 pianists to date in this program — all world-class pianists.”
Kenny Barron plays Saturday, May 15, 2027. Known as a living legend in the jazz world, Barron is a National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Masters fellow, Uman notes, “which is about as high an accolade as you can receive.”
He describes Barron as “one of these true masters we want to pay homage to.”
“He was my teacher for a couple of lessons back when I was living in New York, and I listened to him throughout my youth,” Uman says. “I think he’s one of the very best pianists living on the planet today. So I was really excited when his management said that he wanted to play at our venue, even though he knew that it was going to be kind of a small, intimate event.”
The season wraps up Saturday, June 12, 2027, with Uman’s signature Convergence Project, with some old faces, maybe some new, and with “more new music,” he says.
“It’s one of the impetuses for me to continue to compose and create,” Uman says. “And it keeps me relevant, right?”
He says it’s “one of the things that I love to do.”
“If I don’t continue to program myself as an artist, then I kind of get stuck in the whole administrative/teaching aspect of this job, which is wonderful and important to me,” Uman continues. “But I really came at it as somebody who loves to perform, so this gives me the opportunity to play with musicians I really love and respect and will continue to create new music with.”
Archive launch is a hit
Uman said the VJC archives, a project years in the making, launched to gratifying response on Aug. 7.
“Through the archives,” Uman explains, “we’re connecting the history of jazz with the history of the Vermont Jazz Center, connecting with people like Attila Zoller through all of the concerts that we have preserved over the past 28 years.”
Now that “this significant body of work” is fully accessible, he adds, “we’re reaching out to jazz societies and academic programs throughout the world,” and to the general public.”
The launch was a chance for scholars, players, and jazz lovers alike to become familiar “with the intricacies of what our portal has,” says Uman.
Every four months, the VJC will post a new series, which will include, as explained on archive.vtjazz.org:
• Concert Selections: Videos of full compositions recorded live at the VJC as well as poster images, photos, press releases, links to interviews with headliner artists, set lists, and other related materials.
• Masterlasses: Educational materials garnered from the VJC Solo Piano Festivals.
• Blast from the Past: rare videos of historically significant concerts that took place at the VJC between 1997 and 2019.
• Zoller Recordings: digitized unique recordings from the Attila Zoller Collection from 1961 to 1997.
“We want it to be available to everybody, regardless of their lifestyle [or] of their demographics, and we want to encourage people who don’t usually have the chance to experience jazz to be able to do so free of charge,” Uman says.
Jazz, he believes, is “something that brings joy to people.”
“And,” Uman says, “we want to spread that joy.”
For tickets to the concerts and events described here, and for more information about the Vermont Jazz Center, visit vtjazz.org.
This Arts item by Annie Landenberger was written for The Commons.