By Richard L. Gaw

Staff Writer

If the sound of one jazz band playing is a collective of unique instruments melding together as one, then the sound of several jazz bands playing over the course of one entire day is – at least to aficionados of that medium – the equivalent of a day trip to musical heaven.

For them, an upcoming Sunday in Kennett Square promises to be a day spent high above the clouds, sweetened by the sounds of some of the leading jazz bands in Chester County.

In arrangement with Kennett Festivals, LLC, the first annual KBC Jazz Fest will be held at the Kennett Brewing Company on April 10, featuring a seven-band lineup that forms a Who’s Who of jazz musicians and bands in Chester County.

The nine-hour festival will begin at 12 p.m. and will include hour-long performances by Tuk & The Big Brass Ones, The ParlorPhonic Trio, the Joe Kenney Band, The Jeff Pish Band, the Jason Newman Trio, Dave Mattock’s Taproom Four and will conclude with a set by The Sermon!.

The early ideas for the festival came together in conjunction with the launch of Kennett Festivals, LLC – a partnership between musicians Bryan Tuk, Jeff Piscitello and Dave Mattock, and Jossy Osborn, who along with her husband Mark owns and operates the Kennett Brewing Company.

“Bryan and I have both performed at KBC a number of times, and we’ve developed a great relationship with Jossy and the KBC team,” said Piscitello, who will be performing twice at the festival as a drummer – with his Jeff Pish Band and with The Sermon!. “Jossy suggested the idea of putting a jazz festival together. Soon after, we decided that it could work and I made contacts with other jazz musicians I knew and we then began to put the ideas down on paper.”

For Tuk, coordinating the efforts to create a local jazz festival required a community-based mindset, which made the Osborns a perfect partner.

“I have been surprise how quickly this festival has come together in a relatively short amount of time, but it’s also the right idea at the right time at the right location,” he said. “Nine times out of ten, a proposal like this is liable to get shot down in a different community than Kennett Square, but here, it was very easy. We all agreed that yes, we want to do this and yes, we want to perform it at KBC. We plowed through the logistic rather quickly, and that has enabled us to create this festival with a lot of energy and momentum.”

A portion of the proceeds of the jazz festival will be donated to the music booster programs at Kennett and Unionville High schools.

“We wanted to keep in the spirit of remaining community-minded in creating an event that supports the area, and specifically, musical education,” Piscitello said. “With so many of the performers already connected with music programs, the festival forms a perfect connection between the performance and helping up-and-coming musicians as much as we can.”

The KBC Jazz Fest is being advertised as “the first annual” not just to denote it as a yearly event that local jazz fans can place on their concert-going calendar, but to unite top jazz musicians in a coalition that will shine a well-deserved spotlight on the bands and the growth of the jazz vibe throughout Chester County.

“This festival will gives Chester County jazz an opportunity for all of us to say, ‘There are some people doing some really cool things,’ and the chance to interact with all the performers throughout the day,” Piscitello said. “It will give us the chance to create new friends, who want to hear more of our music, purchase some CDS and listen to us on Spotify.”

“There are a lot of jazz musicians performing within a 45-minute drive of Kennett Square, and while it is a specific and narrow component of the entire music scene, it is also a very deep component,” Tuk said. “Jeff, Dave and I are trying to hold the banner up for the art form because it is important to all of us, and Mark and Jossy have been a large part of that.

“We’ll create a great experience for everyone on April 10, take a day off, and Kennett Festivals will begin to start the planning cycle for additional events in the future.”

The First Annual KBC Jazz Fest will take place at the Kennett Brewing Company on April 10, from 12 p.m. to 9 p.m. Tickets are $20, and are available by visiting www.kennettfestivals.com.

To contact Staff Writer Richard L. Gaw, email [email protected].