Singer Vanessa Rubin will perform on opening night of this year’s DC JazzFest. With performances in venues from the Kennedy Center to the Wharf, the annual festival is scheduled for Aug. 27 through 31. Photo by Roy Cox Photography

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Jazz singer Vanessa Rubin, 68, learned her craft from icons like Sarah Vaughn. Although she couldn’t afford a ticket to every show, she would watch through the window of the club.

“Sometimes they would let you in because they knew you were trying to learn,” she said. “I’d go to gigs and sit down with pencil and paper. I’d study them; study what they do in the moment.

“They come with all that age and wisdom and all that know-how, and you’re not going to be able to do that at 25…We stand on all their shoulders, all the people who have come before us.”

Last year, Rubin visited the Duke Ellington School of the Arts in Washington, D.C. to pass on some of her know-how. She and her trio invited students to watch them rehearse before a performance at Blues Alley downtown.

“We just sat there like three friends who wanted to make some good music, and we laughed, and we talked and just let the students sit there and watch,” she said. “You can’t teach them how to be in the moment. My ‘classroom’ is performing. That’s the only way I can teach, is through performance.”

Rubin will perform on opening night of the DC JazzFest this year. It’s her first appearance at the annual festival, which will take place on Labor Day weekend, Aug. 27 through 31.

More than 100 concerts will take place all over town during the festival, including at the Kennedy Center and The Hamilton DC, culminating on the last night at the Wharf in Southwest.

Music keeps you young

Baltimore-born saxophonist Gary Bartz, 84, a two-time Grammy winner, will headline at this year’s DC JazzFest. Like Rubin, Bartz learned from the greats, including Art Blakey and Miles Davis; in fact, he played with them as a member of their bands.

Bartz’s parents were his “best supporters,” he said. His father owned a club in downtown Baltimore, and Bartz started his musical education there.

“Listening is learning, if you know how to listen. I actually knew how to play before I got a saxophone. I don’t know anyone who could listen better and harder than Miles [Davis].”

Although the building that housed his father’s club still exists, it’s not a music venue anymore.

“The last time I went, I think it was a laundromat. Time moves on,” he said.

Bartz also teaches saxophone at Oberlin College while continuing to perform worldwide. So far this year, he has gone on tour on the West Coast, Indianapolis, New York City and Japan. He also had the stamina to perform in the Rochester and Montreal jazz festivals.

“Music does keep you young,” he said. “It’s weird because I don’t think of myself as [old]. I always think of myself as still learning. I’m still a student, always a student.”

Jazz educator and saxophonist

Several of this year’s headliners have deep roots in the D.C. area, including Paul Carr, 67, a Howard University graduate who will perform with Rubin on opening night at the Hamilton.

Carr, a longtime resident of Silver Spring, Maryland, launched another local festival, the Mid-Atlantic Jazz Fest, 15 years ago. The three-day festival attracts 3,000 people every February.

“Running a jazz festival is a tall order, to say the least,” said Carr, executive and artistic director of the Mid-Atlantic Jazz Fest.

“I actually really enjoy it the Monday after the festival is over…when people come to you and say stuff like, ‘This is the best thing on my calendar all year’ with tears in their eyes.”

Carr also teaches music lessons at the Jazz Academy of Music, which he founded in 2002, passing on what he was taught. As a teenager in Houston, Carr attended a prestigious high school “with this truly legendary teacher, Conrad Johnson,” he said.

“I use some of his techniques when I’m teaching…If you’re remembered, then you’re never really gone,” Carr said, quoting Maya Angelou.

When you’re in the business for decades, as Carr has, it’s rewarding to watch your students become successful, he said.

Many of his former students have become professional musicians, and some work for him at the Jazz Academy summer camps and the Mid-Atlantic Jazz Festival.

“Having my former students really energizes me,” he said. “They tell me stuff that I said to them 20 years ago, which I don’t remember, but it sounds like something I would say. And now I’m learning from them, which is really cool, and that’s the way it should be. Keeps it fresh.”

‘They keep me hip’

Josh Bayer, 60, a Rockville guitarist and JazzFest regular, stays fresh thanks to his students at American University. Bayer, a musician in residence at AU, has run jazz ensembles and taught lessons there for 20 years.

“They keep me hip to what’s happening these days,” Bayer said of his students. “We’ve been in a little bit of a jazz renaissance [for] maybe the last 10 years. I get students coming in as freshmen who are a lot more informed because of the information they can find on the internet… I’m enjoying this new generation.”

Bayer composes and arranges music, but he’s hardly isolated in academia. He’s out playing guitar several nights a week at private events or clubs, but he said he leaves jam sessions for younger musicians: “I don’t want to take spots from people that are trying to come up.”

Bayer has performed as a backup musician at DC JazzFest in years past, but this is his first as a headliner. He’ll be at the Kennedy Center’s Millennium Stage Aug. 30.

“I love this festival because you get to see people — everyone’s in one place,” Bayer said. “It always blows my mind how many cool cats I run into.”

Reunion for jazz musicians

Rubin is also looking forward to seeing old friends in the jazz industry this month.

“Older artists are trying to stay relevant. This society doesn’t reward age like we should. We put old people in the nursing home when we should be listening to them,” she said.

Rubin, who says she’s “now one of the matriarchs” in her family, is staying relevant by headlining DC JazzFest and hosting mini-concerts in her back yard. She calls it Sundown Jazz at V’s Place, and she’s been curating the private shows for five years to perpetuate enthusiasm for jazz.

“Music itself lets my life go on — staying connected to the music and making what you do infectious, so the audience gets into it, too,” she said. “I know they left here better than when they came.”

For a full list of performances, visit dcjazzfest.org.