Upper Valley Jazz Heroes
Jazz is about sharing – using your musical voice to express life in the moment and giving to others. Fred Haas and Sabrina Brown spend their lives doing just that, through performance, teaching and building musical communities throughout the Upper Valley (NH and VT) and beyond for almost three decades, perhaps epitomized by their Interplay Jazz & Arts camp.
Established in 1996, the Camp is an annual intensive held over the past four years at Kimball Union Academy, which has touched instrumental and vocal musicians of all levels who’ve attended or learned of its program focused on aspects of small group improvisation, daily yoga and meditation. A week-long immersive experience also offered occasionally as shorter educational workshops, Interplay brings together a faculty of as many as 30 jazz mentors who run seminars, combos and master classes for students numbering as many as 80. The mentors collaborate with each other and students in inspirational evening performances. The fruit of Fred and Sabrina’s combined efforts is a supportive and inclusive environment where humor, self-discovery and tools for musical and personal growth blend.
That evidently mirrors the success of their personal relationship, or perhaps issues from it. Fred has performed on saxophone and piano around the world, with the likes of Oscar Peterson, Ray Charles, Clark Terry, Attila Zoller and Milt Hinton, and has taught all aspects of jazz, from history to theory to performance at Dartmouth College, Middlebury College and the Vermont Jazz Workshop. Sabrina is a vocalist and event-planner who brings warm, melodic storytelling to audiences in performances with Fred. Partners in life as well as music, they’ve hosted many workshops from the intimacy of their home in Hartland, VT.
For all this Fred Haas and Sabrina Brown are Jazz Heroes, Interplay a beacon beaming the most important qualities of jazz and arts – sharing, expressing, giving – across continents and generations, to immeasurable but undeniable positive effect
By Thea Calitri-Martin and Justin Varnes
