Remembering Howard Stone, a visionary who combined two of his great loves to found the Vail Jazz Foundation

Howard Stone, the founder of the Vail Jazz Foundation, spent a lifetime chasing, supporting and sharing the music that he loved.

Cathy Stone, his wife of 57 years, said that her late husband’s overwhelming love for jazz music had been a central part of his life since the day that she met him when both were students at the University of California Los Angeles. On their first dates, she — a lover of classical music — took him to see a piano concerto at Royce Hall, and he took her to a jazz club.

It was a match made in musical heaven, and though they didn’t know it at the time, the pair was destined to transform the music landscape in Vail as leaders of Bravo! Vail and the Vail Jazz Festival.

For most of his life, Howard didn’t understand why he was so drawn to jazz music. He had been raised by his mother and stepfather in a quiet household where music was not played, and he was 8 years old when his uncle first took him to a jazz club in his hometown of Chicago.

“Howard just said that it was almost like it was a familiar sound,” Cathy Stone said. “It was a wonderful sound, he loved it, and with his pocket money, with his allowance, he started going on the bus to record stores and buying jazz records.”

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That first exposure to jazz began a lifetime of collecting music, attending shows at jazz clubs, getting to know artists and even trying his hand at the saxophone. Jazz became the soundtrack of Howard’s life, and around 15 years ago, when talking with his mother, he learned why.

Howard’s father died when he was 2. He had no memory of him, but it turned out that he never forgot the music that they used to listen to together.

“(His mother) said, ‘Your father was absolutely a jazz fanatic, and you heard jazz while you were in the womb, and you heard jazz when you were a little boy,’” Cathy Stone said. “She said that they used to go to Havana to hear Latin jazz, and used to go every week to the jazz clubs in Chicago. There was always music playing in the house, and it was just like — oh my god. So it wasn’t a new discovery. It was always there his whole life.”

Howard’s deep connection to the music made him a voracious fan in California, but it was in Vail that he chose to create his own jazz legacy.

‘His soul was in Vail’

Howard and Cathy Stone came to Vail for the first time in 1968, and just like his first encounter with jazz music, Howard instantly fell in love. As a young family, the isolation and lack of resources in the valley at the time made it untenable to move here full-time. Instead, the family planted roots in Santa Monica, but Howard considered Vail to be his true home.

“Howard always said that Vail was his home and Santa Monica was mine,” Cathy Stone said. “His soul was in Vail, and his resting place will be in Vail as well. He would never have started the Vail Jazz Festival anywhere but there, because his heart was always in that community.”

Howard was a real estate investor and attorney in Santa Monica, but in Vail he created an outlet for his life’s work and passion with the founding of the Vail Jazz Festival in 1996. The first year that he brought jazz to the valley was 1995, when he put together the first Vail Jazz Party, a multi-day performance event over Labor Day Weekend. 

The following year, he was inspired to expand the program and create the Vail Jazz Foundation, with a mission to “perpetuate jazz music through the presentation of jazz performances and educational programs.” Cathy Stone said that they started the festival on a shoestring budget, and it was the local volunteers and the relationships that they made that enabled the festival to be successful in its early years.

“Howard would say that Vail was the best place to start a jazz festival and the worst place to start a jazz festival,” Cathy Stone said. “It was the best place because of the people and the beauty of the surroundings, but mostly the people. They just volunteered, they were so helpful, and they became, really, extended family. There are a number of volunteers that have volunteered from Day 1, for 27 years.”

One of those Day 1 volunteers is Larry Stewart, a Vail Jazz Foundation board member who attended the very first Vail Jazz Party and has been part of the festival since the beginning. Stewart said that he and his wife were fans of the music, and when they saw what Howard was doing and how he approached his mission, they immediately wanted to be involved.

“Nobody else had the vision and the breadth of understanding that Howard did about jazz and its importance to American culture,” Stewart said. “To me, it was amazing that he wasn’t just interested in jazz to have a good time. He wanted to see jazz be preserved and spread as far and wide as possible, and that really attracted us to him and what he was trying to do.”

In the nearly three decades since its founding, the Vail Jazz Foundation has expanded from a one-weekend show to offer a summer-long Vail Jazz Festival, bringing world-renowned musicians from all over the globe to perform in the valley at accessible prices, with the singular goal of keeping the genre alive and flourishing.

“There is nowhere else in the world that you can get the ticket that Howard has created,” Stewart said. “It’s not available. You can’t find these artists at this level, concentrated in one community over a full summer, anywhere else in the world at our prices.”

Another defining product of the foundation is an elite jazz education program for young musicians called the Vail Jazz Workshop. Every summer, 12 students from high schools around the country are selected through an intensive application process to come to the valley and spend 10 days under close personal tutelage with the program’s six faculty members, all legendary jazz musicians with multiple Grammy awards and influential careers  among them.

Howard knew that if he wanted to perpetuate the art form, he would need to reach the next generation. Through the Vail Jazz Workshop, Vail Jazz Goes to School and Jammin’ Jazz Kids programs he helped hundreds of students gain exposure and instruction to become creators and consumers of jazz music.

“The mission ultimately was to keep jazz music alive, and you can’t keep jazz music alive if you don’t give young people an opportunity to perform and to be properly taught,” Cathy Stone said. “It is now taught in college, but it’s not really that — it has been musicians who have been taught by older musicians, and that’s what we’ve always done in Vail.”

Howard started the Vail Jazz Workshop with bassist John Clayton, a close friend whom he met during a Labor Day weekend jazz party in Denver in the 1980s. Clayton — who is currently performing at the Amersfoort World Jazz Festival in the Netherlands — continues to lead the program every summer, and said that Howard had a special genius for spreading jazz music.

“If you knew Howard, you know that he was never satisfied with the ‘same old, same old,’” Clayton said. “The same kind of artistic creativity that fills my world, filled his with ideas on how to support and, eventually, present jazz.”

Even more valuable than the resources and opportunities that Howard brought to jazz were the relationships that he built. The close friendships that he made with Vail Jazz staff, artists, patrons and audience members were the backbone of the organization, and he considered many to be like family to him and Cathy.

“He was a true friend, one of those I’m-dropping-everything-and-will-be-right-over kind of friends,” Clayton said. “He spent more time at the side of my brother Jeff’s death bed than anyone, save his widow. We’re talking about a friendship we don’t experience often enough in life.”

Howard’s warm, cheerful countenance and bright, colorful wardrobe made him easy to spot and easy to approach in a crowd, and he ran the festival with an openness that invited everyone to be a part of it. He was once a columnist for the Vail Daily, where he would write about all things jazz, and was always looking for ways to get more people in touch with the music.

Amanda Blevins, the executive director of the Vail Jazz Foundation, said it was this inclusion and empathy that drew her to the foundation in the first place.

“He was brilliant, obviously so successful and accomplished, but he was also really approachable and down to earth, and he was so willing to share his knowledge,” Blevins said. “‘Let me introduce you to something, I think you’ll really like this,’ or ‘this song made me think of you’ — that was nonstop with Howard. It made me and other people just feel so connected with the music and the tradition and the culture. I’ve never experienced anything like it. That’s what Howard spread in our community, and it was just contagious.”

A legacy built to last

Losing Howard has been a painful experience for everyone in the Vail Jazz community, but members of the organization said that they are prepared to continue Howard’s legacy in his absence.

Howard was diagnosed with cancer in 2006 and knew that he wanted to build an organization that would outlast his own lifetime. Stewart said that especially over the past six years, the board has been institutionalizing the foundation and hiring new staff members to make sure that Vail Jazz will be able to carry out Howard’s mission.

“Howard is going to be irreplaceable. There is no second Howard Stone,” Stewart said. “He was a unique person, and he’s going to be sorely missed, but we are going to go on, and we’re going to continue to have the highest quality jazz in Vail in the coming years.”

Blevins said that she feels grateful to have had the past few years to learn from Howard, particularly during the pandemic, when live performances were shut down and they had time to sit and think deeply about the future of the organization.

The guidance and leadership she received from Howard have made her confident about steering the organization forward, and she said his memory will be celebrated with every show and education program that the foundation continues to make reality.

“Howard is so important to me and changed so many people’s lives, myself included,” Blevins said. “It has just deepened my work and the reason why I’m dedicated, and I think that is reflected on our staff. He was an incredible guy, and everyone wants to just step up and ensure that Vail Jazz lives on forever, for him.”

Howard Stone died on August 3, 2022 of post-surgical complications. He is survived by his beloved wife Cathy, their son Greg, daughter-in-law, Jude, and his grandchildren Hudson and Harper. 

The Vail Jazz Foundation will be holding a celebration of life for Howard during the Sunday gospel concert at the Vail Jazz Party over Labor Day weekend, and with a reception immediately following.