This Florida Native Is Bringing The First Black Jazz Festival To Orlando

This Black History Month, Blavity is looking at community institutions that are Buying Back the Block.

The Orlando Jazz Festival is bringing jazz to the city!

Set to feature Terrace Martin, Chief Adjuah, and more, the festival is this year from March 21 to 22 and will be held at the Mennello Museum of American Art. Attendees can look forward to one of the most nationally recognized contemporary jazz lineups ever to come to Orlando, with local and international artists including Ryan Devlin, Theo Croke, Elena Pinderhughes, and others.

The festival is expected to draw audiences from across Florida, supporting local businesses and contributing to the city’s growing cultural tourism landscape. It also means a lot to Orlando’s Black population.

The man behind the festival is a Florida native, Jerry Jasmin, who has made it his mission to bring jazz to central Florida and beyond. Blavity spoke with Jasmin about the festival and his expansion plans.

Congratulations on your inaugural jazz festival. Talk to me a little bit about your background with loving jazz music and your journey with the genre.

I wouldn’t consider myself a musician, but I am a former music producer, and in my time producing music, I always loved infusing jazz chords into my beats, even if I was producing trap/rap, I tried to find a way to put jazz in there because I just love how those chords make me feel or make people feel in general. I’d say when I first fell in love with jazz was when my dad used to take me to the beach down in South Florida, and we’d ride back, and he’d listen to Hot 105, and we’d listen to smooth jazz. Funny enough, I don’t like smooth jazz as much these days, but that’s kind of where my first interactions with jazz started.

How long has this festival been in the works? Talk to me about its inception to now.

So, when we started the Orlando Jazz Collective in 2023, we always had the thought of producing a larger festival, but we had to start with smaller shows. I’d say in our second year, actually in our first year, Theo Crocker, who is one of the artists that’s performing at the festival, he told me, ‘What you guys are doing is great, but you guys really need to look into building a festival here.’ So he was one of the first, I guess, I won’t say evangelist, but he dropped the first seed and planted the first seed for us to start producing this jazz festival. So then the following year, I saw that the name Orlando Jazz Festival was available, and I purchased it, and we’ve been planning ever since. So it’s been about 2+ years.

Is there already a jazz festival here in Orlando or close by, or is this the first one and or the first one of its kind?

Great question. So there was an Orlando Jazz Festival prior. I’m not sure what happened, but the name was available, so we jumped on it. There are other festivals locally, but there’s not one centered in Orlando and called the Orlando Jazz Festival. You have different communities. But to answer your question about the first of this kind, I believe this is the first where we’re seeking national Black and brown artists to come and play in Orlando, and really putting that on a pedestal.

Talk to me a little bit about whether there’s significance in where it’s being held.

It’s at the center of Orlando, close to downtown, but, from an aesthetic standpoint, it’s on a lake. So the stage is going to be lakeside. It’s going to be extremely lush and serene. So it’s going to be real vibey.

How did you go about solidifying the performers for the festival? And has it been a difficult undertaking?

So in terms of the artists, I’ve been blessed to be able to form really strong relationships with the artists that we’ve worked with in the past with the Orlando Jazz Collective. We treat people really well, so that translates beyond the folks I can touch. People can see that. And the artists tell their friends. So through the artists that we’ve worked with, we’ve been able to build a network and relationships with their friends and their agents and their agent’s friends. So I’d say building the lineup was probably the hardest thing to do, but it felt very easy to me.

I carefully curated the lineup through music I like, but I’m also watching to see what other people like. I look at the other jazz festivals and jazz clubs around the country and see who’s performing there and who’s selling out the shows, and what does jazz specifically mean to the audience.

Festivals are kind of the thing of this generation now, and they are popping up everywhere at every level. But for you to choose jazz, that’s very niche. It’s a personal thing to you. But what’s the feeling you get from it?

I think the term I could use is just high vibrations, just elevated. It is an elevated ambiance, but just overall a good feeling. It can appear to be niche, but jazz is very fundamental to many different genres, including R&B, hip hop, gospel, and even rock n roll and blues. So I don’t think it’s niche, but the term I would use to describe how I feel, what it means to me is just high vibrations.

What can we expect from the festival outside of the live performances? I’m sure it’s going to be vendor, food, and different activities.

Yes. It’s going to be all of the above: live music, food, vendors, and different activations. The one being one that I think pairs well with jazz is that we are going to have a cigar lounge there, so that’s going to be pretty cool for the cigar smokers out there, enjoy some curated craft cocktails. And it’s going to be an overall a good time.

Where did your entrepreneurial endeavors begin?

I was in grad school, and I started Tree Drop LLC, which started off as just a Christmas tree delivery service, the first of its kind, the first Christmas tree delivery app in the U.S. App Store, and it was made by a Black man. And that has grown. We’re about to celebrate our 10th season this year. That has grown to a full-scale holiday decor business and a holiday lighting business. We’ve worked with notable organizations like the Orlando Magic, Ferrari of Central Florida, the Morris Children’s Hospital. So I’m really proud of that. That was my first baby. And my wife and I run a vending business as well, my wife and my sister-in-law.

In terms of the Orlando Jazz Collective, we’re looking to grow that and really anchor the festival and other year-round programming as something people want to come see in Orlando. The city has 77 million visitors annually. I think it’s important to add a little cultural flavor in the mix and another reason for people to want to come to Orlando.

That was something else that I wanted to talk about, too. The cultural aspect of it, because when I think of Orlando, I don’t think of us necessarily. Yes, people travel to Orlando for the magic of the parks and the sunshine. It’s a great family vacation spot. But in terms of culture, I think Miami. Talk to me about filling that void in Orlando.

When I travel – we lived in LA for a little while – but I’ve traveled to different cities, and I see the camaraderie amongst Black folks and how they surround jazz, how they support jazz. We lived in LA, and folks used to line up to get into jazz clubs. Down here, jazz is still very, very niche, and it feels unapproachable. So I think that it’s important for us to rally around an art form that is foundationally a Black American art form, and it speaks to high intellect but also high vibration, so it makes you feel good, but it’s also something that you can learn from. It’s an intellectual art form. I aspire to build that community here and give us something to be proud of and to drive in and fly in talent to want to come here and congregate together with other Black folks.

You’ve spoken a bit about the Orlando Jazz Collective. For those unfamiliar, explain what it is.

The Orlando Jazz Collective is a 501c3 nonprofit; it’s an arts organization. We started off in 2023. Our first artist was Braxton Cook who we hosted down here, and he’s been here several times since. He’s also coming back to the festival. We have worked with Theo Croker, Maurice Mo Betta Brown, who’s a Grammy winner. We have worked with Javier Santiago, Butcher Brown, the latter is a super dope band out of Richmond, Virginia, and then our last show in May of 2025 was with Grammy Award winning trumpeter Keyon Harold as well, who did the horns on Pretty Wings by Maxwell and has worked with Jay-Z. He is a super, super dope, dope guy, a super dope artist.

I did kind of start a spinoff from Orlando Jazz Collective called The Traveling Jasmine, where I traveled to different areas in the country, and hopefully in the world, and document it and interview these jazz artists to show them in a different light as well. But I think something I really wanted to say is the level of artistry that we’re bringing here is something to be considered when thinking about coming to our events. We’re not just obviously there are many talented people and jazz artists here in Orlando or musicians in general, but the guys that we’re bringing down are world-traveled. They do this day in and day out. They’re award-winning.

Terrace Martin, for example, was just nominated for two Grammys this year. He was very instrumental in Kendrick Lamar’s early sound, and he was really part of that production. So it’s important for people to understand you’re not just going to hear straight-ahead jazz when you come to our shows. You’re going to hear an infusion. You’ll have hip hop, R&B, a little bit of it all. Theo Crocker just released a song that came out of Ari Lennox’s latest album. These guys aren’t just straight-ahead jazz. It’s going to be a really good time overall.

The post This Florida Native Is Bringing The First Black Jazz Festival To Orlando appeared first on Blavity.

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