Jazz Swings the Hamptons

News, From the Magazine, Various Artists

By Dan Ouellette I Aug. 1, 2023

Claes Brondal (left) with Joe Lovano at the Hamptons Jazz Fest.
(Photo: Anthony Lombardo)

Eighty miles east of the world’s jazz capital, the tony South Fork Long Island enclave of the Hamptons has long been known as a summer playground for an abundance of New York celebrities ranging from the film world to pop icons. But within this scene, stereotyped as high-powered executives with mansions who host lavish parties for the exclusive, jazz has carved its niche as a hip, cultured fascination. It has become an unlikely hotbed of jazz activity — from Montauk to Southampton — that remarkably is turning heads and opening ears not just in the primetime summer but yearlong.

The Hamptons Jazz Festival, which enters its third year with more than 40 shows from the end of June through the beginning of September, has largely been helmed by Joel Chriss, a top-tier booking agent, concert promoter and artist manager who retired from the New York life and settled locally. “I’m the artistic director for the whole festival,” the 66-year-old Chriss declares in his spacious home. He has ample support from Denmark-born, Hamptons-based drummer Claes Brondal, who in 2009 founded a popular weekly event called The Jam Sessions.

“When I retired from my J. Chriss & Co. booking agency in 2018, I wanted to create a jazz community that maybe could do a concert series or set up a club,” Chriss says. After finding community at The Jam Session (originally staged at Bay Burger), Chriss was invited to be a board member for the nonprofit The Jam Session Inc.

“Claes had already established a good thing, and I slowly recommended artists,” he says. “But being involved in just The Jam Session didn’t get me up in the morning. I’ve had this idea in my head to do something much bigger.”

It wasn’t long before Chriss floated the idea of putting on a full-fledged jazz festival to the board. “But we needed to get the financial support system,” he said. It arrived when an anonymous businessman fronted the group a large sum in March 2021 to stage the first festival. But there was a contingency: The fest would start three months later.

“I don’t know how we did it in such a short amount of time, but we pulled it off,” says Chriss, who ponied up some of his own savings. Because of such short notice, there was no time to promote it or get editorial support, but word of the festival got out through social media and Brondal’s rallying cry at The Jam Sessions that now take place every Tuesday in the funky Masonic Temple space in Sag Harbor.

The team put on 40 outdoor shows during the height of COVID-19 where participants were masked and audience members stood six feet apart.

They didn’t have a lot of time to secure venues, but many major rooms offered space, including Gosman’s Dock in Montauk, the Parrish Art Museum in Water Mill, the Southhampton Arts Center and a newly renovated gem of a building, The Church in Sag Harbor. Money was raised for each show, but attendees got in free.

Brondal invites players to the donation-only Jam Sessions each week, including regular Randy Brecker, who lives nearby. Brondal says that Chriss has boosted the entire jazz scene to become a communal gathering. “I compare his arrival to fishing with a rod and then having a trawler with nets come along to scoop up a variety of fish,” he says. “Joel had such access to artists because of his connections. My artistic vision and his access has helped us to fill a cultural void.”

The East End is returning to its roots as a vital scene of live music. Brondal admits that cross-cultural sentiment has been rare in the Hamptons, except, as he told one local reporter, “back in the whaling days where people from all over world walked the streets, dozens of languages were spoken, bringing along customs and traditions, and music.” That scenario is the goal. He’s hoping the festival serves to reunite the East End with today’s wider multicultural movement. DB