Now in its 21st year, the Duck Jazz Festival is returning to the town of Duck this month, with diverse artists performing on two stages, the town’s amphitheater and the main stage on the Town Green.
A preview performance is set for Saturday, Oct. 10, and then performances are scheduled continuously throughout the day on Sunday, Oct. 11.
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The Duck Jazz Festival is a free concert, and concertgoers are invited to bring a picnic and beverages, Duck Public Information Director Kay Nickens told the Coastal Review.
She said people can bring chairs, picnics, blankets, coolers. “You know, come set up camp for the day. You pretty much just show up when the (event) opens, and spend your day in Duck,” she said.
Food trucks will be on hand and numerous restaurants in Duck will be open for the event, she added.
The day will feature seven artists and bands whose styles range from a classic jazz trio to big band, and that diversity of sound is something Nickens has been trying to create since she became event coordinator in 2023.
“There are so many different parts of jazz, and you know, and so it’s really cool to be able to bring a group here that represents each type of jazz,” she said.
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The music begins at 11 a.m. with Philadelphia-based bassist and recording artist Gerald Veasley on the main stage.
Tito Puente Jr. is the headline act, bringing high-energy, Latin-based jazz to the stage beginning at 5:25 p.m.
Puente’s father, Tito Puente, was one of the most well-known and respected musicians from the 1950s until his death in 2000. His son carries on that legacy, playing some of the same instruments his father did including timbales and other percussion instruments. Known for outstanding musicianship, Puente and his band’s performances are filled with improvisational riffs.
Also performing on the main stage this year, the Brass Queens return to the Duck Jazz Festival after a four-year absence. The all-women, Dixieland-style band has been one of the most-requested groups to perform at the festival.
“We always do a post-event survey, and on (the 2023) survey, there were a lot of requests to have them back,” Nickens explained. “And in 2024, we did the same survey. They didn’t perform in 2024, but they were still making an appearance in the survey. People wanted them to come back because that was something that resonated with them.”
The ensemble’s 2023 appearance was at the amphitheater, a smaller venue than the Town Green. The band, with its dynamic stage presence and audience engagement, had audience for that show out of their seats and dancing at the foot of the stage.
The festival lineup also includes Shayna Steele, whom Nickens described as “a phenomenal vocalist. I just get chills thinking about her deep, powerhouse vocal ability. She pours so much heart and soul into what she does.”
The Saturday preview performance at 4 p.m. on the Town Green will feature guitarist Adam Hawley. His style is sometimes considered “smooth jazz,” but in performance, he reinvents the genre and creates a sound of his own.
Then after Hawley’s performance, in Duck Jazz Festival tradition, festival musicians will come together to host a live jam session at 7 p.m. at The Blue Point, a restaurant on the Currituck Sound waterfront.
For Nickens, this will be her fourth year as the festival’s event coordinator, and she said she has become more involved with the musicians and their music over the years. She has “grown to appreciate that we have so much history with jazz music here in North Carolina, and to be able to continue the tradition of something so deeply rooted in North Carolina culture, and to create an experience where people, see it, live it, hear it, and ultimately appreciate it and love it, it’s just really cool,” she said.
