Community Conversation: Jazz Inspirations

Register here: $10 general. $8 seniors + students, free for members

Beginning with a guitar performance by Tim Cole at 5:30pm, this community conversation will explore the dynamic intersection of music and the visual arts. Engaging with the works on display in Art, Jazz + the Blues, a panel of musicians, scholars, educators, and arts advocates will discuss how we “see” music and “hear” art, and how these two worlds sustain a vibrant local culture. Panelists will reflect on their formative encounters with art and music, describing their personal journeys and their current projects in our community and beyond. We’ll explore the shared language of art and music – how words like texture, color, tone, and rhythm translate across disciplines, and how a visual work of art can inspire musical composition and improvisation. With Westport regularly designated as a “Best Community for Music Education,” and known for its rich artistic heritage, the group will illuminate what it takes to sustain these arts across generations, including how today’s students engage with the traditions of jazz and blues represented in the works in the exhibition. Audience questions and engagement is encouraged!

Panelist Bios:

Richard Epstein, co-founder Jazz Society of Fairfield County, Westport Arts Advisory Committee.  A Westport native and dentist, Richard and his wife Ina Chadwick founded Thursday night jazz when saxophonist Greg Wall moved here in 2014. Richard plays bassoon in the Norwalk Symphony, alto sax with the Westport Community Band, and is working on his jazz chops. He mentors young musicians in KEYS and other programs. He has served in leadership positions on the boards of many local arts organizations and the Westport Arts Advisory Committee. Richard has hosted “Sometimes Classical”, an eclectic music show on WPKN radio since 1977 that he calls his “ultimate play time”.

Kevin Mazzarella, Director of Bands, Staples High School. Kevin is a versatile trumpet performer and educator based in the NY/CT area, with credits including Carnegie Hall, Norwalk Symphony, Birdland Big Band, and Goodspeed Opera House, and extensive experience as a lead and section jazz performer. He is the Director of Bands at Staples High School in Westport, CT—affectionately known as Mr. Mazz—where he directs ensembles and teaches AP Music Theory. A dedicated jazz educator, he leads the school’s top jazz ensemble and previously directed a middle school jazz band selected as a Showcase Ensemble at the 2020 CMEA Conference. He was named Coventry Public Schools’ Teacher of the Year in 2024. Kevin holds degrees from the University of Miami, Columbia University, and the University of Saint Joseph, along with a Graduate Certificate in Trumpet Performance from the University of Connecticut. An active member of CMEA, he has presented on jazz improvisation and trumpet pedagogy, served as the 2025 NAfME All-Eastern Division Jazz Band Co-Chair, and currently serves as CMEA Western Region High School Concert Band Co-Chair.

Brian Torff, Professor of Music, Fairfield University. Brian Torff, after a career as a jazz bassist and composer that began in the 1970s, now creates music as a singer-songwriter, guitarist, and blues harmonica player. Torff has performed with Frank Sinatra, Tony Bennett, George Shearing, Dizzy Gillespie, Erroll Garner, Mary Lou Williams, Stephane Grappelli and Marian McPartland, among others. As an author and Professor of Music at Fairfield University, Brian Torff combines his music history and Civil Rights research trips to the Deep South with dynamic songs that tell an American story. “We need to create new musical categories,” says Torff, “and I hope our music is a soundtrack to an American road trip, past and present.”

Caitlin von Schmidt, American vocalist, bassist, and designer. Daughter of Eric von Schmidt. Originally from Cambridge, Massachusetts, she moved to Tucson, Arizona to attend university in 1980 and became a founding member of the bands River Roses, Ortho 28, and Caitlin & The Stickponies. She is the niece of Bob Jones, who through his work for George Wein’s Festival Productions, was the road manager for Duke Ellington, Thelonious Monk, Count Basie, Buddy Rich, Sarah Vaughan, Archie Shepp, and Cannonball Adderley during the 1960s, and later the longtime director of the Newport Folk and Newport Jazz festivals and a founding producer of the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage festival. Her mother, Helen von Schmidt, Bob’s sister, was the house mother for artist housing at the early Newport Folk and Jazz Festivals, and through those connections Caitlin did summer work for the Kool Jazz Festival in New York City in the late ‘70s, and the Newport Folk and Jazz Festivals in the ‘80s, ‘90s, and early aughts. She settled in Greenfield, Massachusetts in 2007 with her husband and son, and now works as the outreach and communications manager at the local food co-op.