Marcus Shelby ready to put his stamp on Healdsburg Jazz Fest

Under the best of conditions, Marcus Shelby faced a rough road in taking over the Healdsburg Jazz Festival’s reins from founding artistic director Jessica Felix.

Over two decades, drawing on her longstanding friendships with master improvisers who shaped the music’s rapid evolution in the 1960s, Felix turned the sleepy Wine Country town into a major jazz destination.

As a renowned bassist, composer and bandleader, Shelby can call on his own deep network of friends and colleagues, but he knew coming into the leadership role that it would take some time to make it his own.

Running a performing arts organization in the midst of a global pandemic however meant that he was tackling obstacles he couldn’t have prepared for or imagined right from the get-go. He’s overseen a full spectrum of online performances, classes, and workshops since the fall of 2020, and takes the next major step when he ushers Healdsburg Jazz back into the material world June 13-19.

Running for a week rather than 10 days, the festival’s 24th edition is shorter and more densely programmed than it was pre-pandemic, reflecting what Shelby cites as his vision of music sitting “at the intersection of dance, theater, spoken word and all the other art forms.”

He came into the position with a five-year plan, he says, “and even without the pandemic we would have had to get off to a slower start. Our third year will be the 25th anniversary and that’s when we’ll hopefully be much more back to normal.”

Until then, Shelby has put together a splendid program of ticketed and free concerts at venues and spaces around the picturesque city. Berkeley vocalist Tiffany Austin, who directs the festival’s Healdsburg Freedom Jazz Choir, kicks off the festivities June 13 with her quintet, playing two sold-out shows at Hotel Healdsburg’s Garden Courtyard.

Jesús Díaz y su Qba, the prodigious eight-piece band headed by the Cuban percussion master, plays the festival’s first free community concert on June 14 in the Healdsburg Plaza. And the June 15 program introduces the organization’s new artist in residence, harpist and vocalist Destiny Muhammad, who premieres a new suite at an intimate Little Saint dinner show. Grammy Award-winning violinist Mads Tolling & The Mads Men featuring vocalist extraordinaire Kenny Washington follow Muhammad’s show at the restaurant with a separately ticketed late concert.

The shows at Little Saint reflect Shelby’s ongoing campaign to expand the festival’s presence in Healdsburg. He’s forged several new relationships for presenting shows, like the Destiny Muhammad Quartet concert with the Freedom Jazz Choir at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church on June 18. In weaving the arts throughout the community he’s inspired by festivals he played in Europe, “like the Umbria Jazz Festival in Perugia, these little hamlets that remind me of Healdsburg,” Shelby said.