EDMONDS — The 39th annual DeMiero Jazz Festival starts March 5 at the Edmonds Center for the Arts.
The festival offers workshops for students and public performances by great musicians. Directed by the jazz man himself, Frank DeMiero, the festival’s concerts are at 7 p.m. March 5 through 7.
The lineup this year includes the vocal jazz group Groove for Thought along with Greta Matassa, Lauren Kinhan and festival artistic director Dee Daniels. Also performing are the Seattle Jazz Singers, Edmonds Community College’s Soundsation and the festival’s house combo of Bruce Forman, David Tull, Josh Nelson and Jay Leonhart.
With their modern harmonies and rhythmic inventions, festival headliner Groove for Thought honors groups such as Manhattan Transfer.
This year, the festival is dedicated to the memory of Manhattan Transfer founder and multiple Grammy award-winner Tim Hauser, who died in October.
A special tribute to Hauser is planned during the March 7 concert.
On March 4, Hauser’s wife Barb Sennet Hauser, a 1983 Cascade High School graduate, will be on hand to accept the DeMiero Jazz Festival Tenuto Award, given posthumously this year to Tim Hauser.
For 30 years, the jazz festival has presented the award to people who make significant contributions to the art of vocal jazz.
“Tim was a good friend and an amazing man,” DeMiero said. “His vision and creativity really changed the world of music. What the Manhattan Transfer has accomplished is simply profound. I am so glad Barb will be here. They were a special couple.”
Barb Hauser sang in the Del Sonics jazz choir at Cascade under the direction of Ken Kraintz, who now is the assistant director of DeMiero’s Seattle Jazz Singers. As a teen, Barb was a devoted fan of the Manhattan Transfer. Over the years, she saw the quartet numerous times in concert, including in 2006 at Jazz Alley in Seattle.
“Tim always said that he could not take his eyes off me during that concert,” Barb Hauser said. “After the show we talked and decided to keep in touch.”
The following year, the couple began a whirlwind romance and soon married.
At a reunion of former Del Sonics members not long ago, Tim Hauser sang and Frank DeMiero spoke in honor of Kraintz.
“Everything comes full circle. I appreciate Frank so much,” she said.
Barb Hauser’s three sons went to Kamiak High School and they still live in the area, so she will be visiting family and friends as well as attending the DeMiero Jazz Fest.
At the recent Grammy awards celebration, Barb Hauser was on hand to watch the memorial roll of those musicians who died in 2014, including Hauser.
“Tim was a brilliant, beautiful man who left a great legacy,” she said.
For other Manhattan Transfer fans, the group is scheduled to perform May 29 at the Edmonds Center for the Arts, marking the 40th anniversary of the group’s debut album on Atlantic Records. Members Janis Siegal, Alan Paul and Cheryl Bentyne (who grew up in Mount Vernon) plan to pay tribute to Hauser and welcome the group’s newest member, Trist Curless.
Gale Fiege: 425-339-3427; gfiege@heraldnet.com. Twitter: @galefiege.
If you go
DeMiero Jazz Festival, 7 p.m. March 5 through 7, Edmonds Center for the Arts, 410 Fourth Ave. N., Edmonds. Tickets: $35 or $25 for students age 21 and younger; online at www.edmondscenterforthearts.org or call 425-275-9595.
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