Healdsburg Jazz Festival artistic director Jessica Felix will step down

Jessica Felix, the founder and longtime artistic director of the Healdsburg Jazz Festival, is stepping down from her post at the end of September.

“I want to relax, travel, socialize and make my jewelry again,” she says. “It’s time to be in the audience. It’s time to just enjoy my life.”

Felix founded the Healdsburg Jazz Festival in 1999 and has overseen its growth in size and acclaim since then, managing to book such A-List performers as Charles Lloyd, Randy Weston, Abbey Lincoln, Fred Hersch, Bobby Hutcherson, Jack DeJohnette and Geri Allen to perform for fans in this Russian River city known for wineries, restaurants and tourism.

“I love this music deeply and feel very proud of the vast and diverse array of incredible artists I have presented over the years, bringing many to the West Coast for the first time,” she says.

The festival will continue on without Felix, with organizers planning (and hoping) for a return in 2021 after this year’s event was canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The festival’s website has been serving up a steady stream of classes, presentations and concerts online, as part of its Staying Connected series.

When the festival does resume, however, Felix’s absence will definitely be felt by the local jazz community.

“Not only has Jessica Felix been a true inspiration to me, but she is also one of my very best friends,” says Marcus Shelby, the Bay Area bassist-bandleader-composer who has organized choir projects involving hundreds of Sonoma County amateur singers for the festival over the years. “I met Jessica 30 years ago through Billy Higgins when I was a young musician in L.A.

“She is a treasure to our community and will be missed.”

Felix is confident the festival will continue to find success.

“I have a strong board and staff, and with my artistic director successor — who we’ll be announcing soon — the festival will flourish,” she says.

Felix’s passion for jazz music started right around the time she graduated from high school in Los Angeles in the late-’60s and came across a copy of Charles Lloyd’s magical “Forest Flower” album.

“Listening to it I opened up to new music, a new feeling, a new form. It opened a door to my soul,” she says.

A decade later, she had moved to San Francisco and was making jewelry when she took a part-time job watching the door at the legendary Keystone Korner jazz club on Vallejo Street.

“I didn’t have a lot of money, so I started making these necklaces with the words ‘Bright Moments,’ which are lyrics to a song by Rahsaan Roland Kirk. I traded these necklaces for tickets with the club owner, Todd Barkan, so I could get into the club and hear the music,” Felix says.

Along the way she forged friendships with such artists as George Cables, Charlie Haden, Dave Holland, Jessica Williams and Billy Higgins.

And Felix is a mighty good friend to have at your side, as illustrated by the fundraisers she organized when Cables and Higgins needed financial help due to their medical conditions.

“When Jessica first contacted me it was to do a benefit concert for Master Billy Higgins in 1996 at Kimball’s East,” Charles Lloyd says. “We had a brief encounter at that time — there was a lot going on. When she reached out a year later to invite Billy and me to Healdsburg to give a duo concert, I called Billy and asked him if he wanted to do it. ‘She’s good people,’ he said. And so, we agreed to go there, just the two of us at the Raven Theater in November 1997.”

Her bond with Lloyd continued to grow over the years, which was only fitting since it was the saxophonist’s music that turned Felix onto jazz in the first place.

“I came to understand and appreciate not only how deep Jessica’s love for our indigenous art form is, but how committed she is to expanding the experience and knowledge of her community, Lloyd says. “After creating the Healdsburg Jazz Festival with so many great artists year after year, she also brought us into the schools so kids can have a direct experience. She is a true friend, and has been a great gift to the Healdsburg Jazz Festival.”