CHESTERTOWN — Ahead of announcements including the full lineup of performers, founding organizers of the Chestertown Jazz Festival find the 30th anniversary a special time for reflecting on its history.
This year’s festival, which will be the last, is set for Saturday, Sept. 12 from noon to 6 p.m. in Wilmer Park. It’s being advertised as “Three decades of music. One unforgettable finale.”
Melvin S. “Mel” Rapelyea, a physician and jazz enthusiast who moved to Chestertown in the early 1990s, is one of the festival founders.
“One of the big things about this year’s festival is that we are bringing back some of our first musicians,” Rapelyea said.
Among local performers who will return this year are vocalists Karen Somerville and Sue Matthews, who performed back when the festival was first held on the lawn behind the White Swan Tavern.
Rapelyea said the impetus for the first jazz festival was to create a cultural event that would fundraise for a museum on local African American and Indigenous histories, a collaboration between Maggie Duncan and Somerville.
“It’s very hard to believe that we’ve come this many years,” Rapelyea said. “But in the process of doing this you meet local musicians, you meet local people who like to do things for others.”
Rapelyea said community members, philanthropists and local- and state-level cultural institutions have been there since the beginning to help secure and provide resources for the festival.
The Garfield Center for the Arts has been a sponsor for more than a decade now, according to Rapelyea.
Rapelyea and Leslie Raimond, then director of the Kent County Arts Council [and now director emeritus of the renamed Kent Cultural Alliance], first put their heads together for a musical fundraiser to support the African and Native American Cultural Activities Museum in the year before the first festival took place in 1996.
Supporting the Chestertown Jazz Festival was a combined effort of many driven people who care about preserving and sharing history, along with supporting the public arts, Raimond said.
For example, Keter Betts, the world-renowned jazz bassist who accompanied Ella Fitzgerald, ran workshops for Kent County High School students during early years of the festival, according to Raimond.
Examples of the community “giving back” have continued throughout the multiple decades of the event, Raimond said.
How has Chestertown managed to attract such big-name talent to the small river town over the years?
“Reaching out to people who are real jazz ‘aficionados’ who realize that jazz festivals and jazz itself is considered the great musical contribution of America,” Raimond said.
A shared sense of understanding for the cultural and historical value of jazz, along with a local celebration of community has long kept the tradition going, according to Raimond.
“The idea is to celebrate the river and have the event outside, under a tent, and often you get the beautiful ships that go by, or the moon comes up, or the sun sets and you are enjoying the most ancient experience of living, and then enjoying the music that has come out of that experience,” Ramond said. “And then you could eat your oysters, if you want,” she added.
For more information, including the festival performers and how to purchase tickets, see www.garfieldcenter.org/gcaevent/2025-chestertown-jazz-fest-2/.
