The second annual Mercer County Jazz Festival was held on July 7 at the Festival Grounds at Mercer County Park.
The Festival, which lasted from 2 to 8 p.m. and is sponsored by Mercer County, featured a musical lineup of four different groups.
From legendary saxophonist, Bob Pollitt, to AyA, a group who mixes jazz with R&B and gospel, to Jeff Bradshaw, a soul-jazz and hip-hop innovator. Headlining the event for the second year in a row, was the two-time Grammy-nominated duo, The Baylor Project.
Aaron Watson, the Executive Director of the Mercer County Park Commission, came up with the idea for these annual festivals back in 2016 with his team.
“Prior to my taking over, I knew there was a lot of country, rock and some rhythm and blues, but there was no jazz at all,” Watson said. “We come from a jazz rich history, particularly in this county. Back in the late 80’s and 90’s, we had a jazz festival in the city of Trenton, which always had phenomenal success. I wanted to emulate that, I wanted to bring that back. I come from living here for close to 60 years, I remember all the great musicians who came out of Trenton. I said, look we have to bring this back because this is a genre that appeals to everybody. We had our first one last year, it was a success, so we want to keep it up. We want this to be an annual event.”
When Watson was hired a few years ago, Mercer County Executive Brian Hughes asked him to open the county up and diversify everything. Hughes wanted people to come together. That is what Watson has been trying to do.
“I’m looking into that crowd, I’m seeing black people, I’m seeing white people, I’m seeing Spanish people, I’m seeing Asian folks, I’m seeing old, I’m seeing young,” said Watson. “That’s what I am trying to do. I’m trying to bring people together. And I’m seeing that. Diversity is the key.”
The previous year’s festival was just the beginning of what Watson plans to do. Though, at the time, he didn’t realize that he would be able to do it all on his own.
“I’ve been around entertainment all of my life,” he said. “Last year, we knew that this was going to be a significant undertaking, so we partnered with an organization. But, at the end of the day, I said to myself that this was something we could do on our own. This year, our team decided we could do this on our own. I think that there are enough resources around here to do that.”
Now that Watson has seen the success his festivals have brought, he plans to do more for Mercer County and more with jazz.
“I want to see this continue and I want to see this to grow,” he said. “We’re going to have a mini jazz festival towards the end of the year. We want to try to grow this. People really enjoy this kind of music; this music comes from a deep place.”
The deep place that jazz comes from can be heard when listening to the musical group, AyA. Through each song they play, the group tries to express a deeper message.
“I think we try to convey happiness and love through our music,” Kim Still said from the jazz band, AyA. “That’s what we sing about and play about. All of our originals are geared toward positivity.”
Playing in front of a crowd of over a hundred people, AyA looked to instill their message of positivity to each of the audience members.
“We enjoy jazz and we thought that this would be a nice event,” said Larry Kaiserman of Holmdel. “We’re looking forward to a number of groups that are playing, we really enjoy jazz. This is our first time here, some of our friends told us about it, they had a wonderful time last year and we felt that it would be a beautiful evening.”
Jazz listeners a like, sat and took in the smooth traditional style of jazz on the nice and breezy Saturday.
“I have known about this jazz festival for a while, and I just wanted to be here to patronize the event,” said Langston Burrell, a community member. “I am a jazz listener and I wanted to be one of the people in attendance today. It’s good music, good weather and anytime there is something like this, I try to be a participant and an observer of the jazz.”