Art notes: Sedalia to celebrate jazz and wine

Robert Jospé never thought he’d go into education.

“I really just thought of myself as a performer,” says Jospé, a drummer who went to New York University and cut his teeth performing in the city for 15 years before moving south to Charlottesville in 1981.

With the move to Virginia came an eventual position teaching percussion at the University of Virginia, where he’s been part of the music faculty for 20 years.

He was the university’s first jazz drumming instructor and also teaches a hand-drumming course called “Learn to Groove.”

“Teaching became a source of income,” he says, “and a way to pass information on to other people.”

Jospé is still a performer, too.

He tours with Inner Rhythm, a sextet of musicians from Charlottesville and Richmond that came together almost 10 years ago through a grant from the Virginia Commission for the Arts.

They’ll be performing during the Sedalia Center’s Jazz & Wine Festival, which is scheduled for 4 p.m. Saturday in Big Island.

Jospé will also wear his teaching hat over the weekend, when he and three members of Inner Rhythm hold a festival workshop about musical forms used to play jazz and how the genre has been influenced by African rhythms.

The workshop goes from 5:45 to 6:30 p.m., and then the entire group will take the stage to perform what Jospé describes as their fusion of jazz, Latin, funk and Afro-pop.

“It’s a pretty broad range,” he says. “It’s not just a straight swing jazz concert. We have strong Latin influences and R&B and blues.”

Other main stage acts include Gus Miller with Accent and the Sha-nniece James Project.

Local wineries will be on hand for the festival, and seafood will be for sale.

Tickets are $10 in advance and $15 at the gate. They can be purchased online at www.sedaliacenter.org or by calling (434) 299-5080.

Devil’s Backbone to hold music festival
The first annual Brew Ridge Trail Music Festival is scheduled for this weekend on the grounds outside of the Devils Backbone Brewing Company in Roseland, with proceeds going to benefit the Lovingston Opry.

From noon to 8 p.m., attendees will be able to taste the ales of regional breweries like the Devils Backbone, Afton’s Blue Mountain Brewery, Charlotteville’s South Street Brewery and Crozet’s Starr Hill Brewery.

The music starts at 12:30 p.m., a mix of bluegrass, alt-country and roots rock performers like Earl Knox, William Walter & Tucker Rogers, Robbing Mary, Jesse Harper, The Infamous Stringdusters and Sons of Bill.

Tickets are $15 in advance and $20 at the gate for adults and $10 for children ages 4 to 13 (children 3 and younger get in free).

They can be purchased by calling (800) 594-TIXX, online at www.musictoday.com, or at one of the following outlets: Blue Mountain Brewery (9519 Critzers Shop Rd. in Afton), Devils Backbone Brewery (200 Mosbys Run in Roseland), the Lovingston Opry (632 Front St. in Lovingston) and the Nelson County Visitor’s Bureau (8519 Thomas Nelson Hwy.).

For more information, visit brewridgetrail.com or dbbrewingcompany.com.