Samantha Fish, photo by Aries Photography NOLA
(MORRISTOWN, NJ) -- The free annual Morristown Jazz & Blues Festival will be held on Saturday, August 16, 2025 on the Green. Music begins at noon and runs until 10:00pm. The lineup includes Dani G and Friends, The Jazz Ambassadors, Blues People, King Solomon Hicks, and Samantha Fish. As it has for the past three years, the Festival will honor two of its founders, Linda Smith and Michael Fabrizio, who both sadly passed away in June 2021.
The Festival begins at noon with the swinging jazz of Dani G and Friends, featuring Grammy Award-nominated saxophonist John Michalak, who has collaborated with music greats including Julio Iglesias, Gloria Estefan, David Lee Roth and Engelbert Humperdinck. The band is led by vocalist Dani G who brings her brand of swinging jazz to the sounds of the Great American Songbook and popular classics.
At two o’clock, the jazz continues with the U.S. Army’s premier jazz ensemble, The Jazz Ambassadors. This 19-piece ensemble draws on big band charts from the Swing Era with an emphasis on Duke Ellington, Count Basie and Benny Goodman.
Then at four it is the sensational Blues People, whose quartet blends funk, soul, jazz, rock, and blues into what they call “the New Sound of NYC/North Jersey Blues.” Their debut album, The Skin I’m In earned a Blues Blast 2024 Music Awards Nomination for “Best New Artist Debut Album.” In 2023 and 2024, they won the North Jersey Blues Society International Blues Challenge.
At six, the Festival brings the young guitar prodigy to the stage, King Solomon Hicks. His newest release, Harlem, won the Blues Music Award’s “Best Emerging Artist” and he is featured at blues festivals around the world. He has performed with a long list of legendary artists including Tony Bennett, George Thorogood, Marcus King and Jeff Beck.
The festival comes to a close with guitarist and singer-songwriter Samantha Fish who has won multiple Blues Blast Awards, Blues Music Awards, 22 Independent Blues Awards, Living Blues Awards, and 13 Offbeat’s Best of the Beat Awards. She has been nominated for Grammy Awards and is featured regularly on Sirius Bluesville Radio. She and her band are an exciting way to close this year’s Festival.
One of the most formidable guitarists of her generation, Samantha Fish deals in her own unmatched brand of bravado, bringing both mind-blowing power and extraordinary emotionality to everything she creates. Since first introducing the world to her larger-than-life talent, the multi-award-winning festival headliner has built a triumphant career whose milestones include earning a Grammy nomination for Death Wish Blues (her 2023 collaboration with rocker Jesse Dayton, which hit #1 on the Billboard Blues Chart) and invitations to tour with The Rolling Stones, Eric Clapton, Slash, Kenny Wayne Shepherd and Eric Johnson on the Experience Hendrix Tour and more.
On her latest album Paper Doll, Fish offers up nine powerhouse songs that hit with an unstoppable force, each delivered with an exquisite dose of illuminating insight, soul-soothing empathy, and—above all—newly heightened clarity of vision. “It’s taken me years to finally find my voice in a studio setting,” Fish admits. “But with this record I took everything I had and slammed it right on the table.”
Fish’s first-ever album recorded with her touring band, Paper Doll marks the latest entry in an uncompromising and endlessly adventurous catalog that’s found the Kansas City-bred musician working with luminaries like Jon Spencer of Jon Spencer Blues Explosion as well as Luther Dickinson (co-founder of North Mississippi Allstars and former member of the Black Crowes). This time around, Fish teamed up with Detroit garage-rock icon Bobby Harlow, recording at The Orb in Austin and Savannah Studios in L.A. and cutting most of the album in the midst of a grueling touring schedule. A potent balance of catharsis and introspection, boldness and vulnerability, the result is the glorious sound of an artist unapologetically coming into her own.
“We are excited to be back in August,” said Mayor Dougherty who initiated the festival in 2011. “From vibrant jazz to soulful blues, there is something for every music lover. It’s no wonder that we attract fans from far beyond the metro area -- people come from all over the country and even internationally. We are deeply thankful to our generous sponsors for making this amazing Festival a reality!”
Some of the sponsors for this summer’s festival include the Morristown Municipal Airport, Berger & Bornstein Law, Bijou Properties, Dughi Hewit & Domlewshi, Hampshire Co LLC, Inglesino Webster, M-Station Urban Renewal Associates, Rainone Coughlin Minchello, Vision Real Estate, Atlantic Health, Deloitte, F. J. Rawding AIA, Headquarters Plaza/Second Roc Jersey Associates, SJP Properties, MHS, Sanofi, Sills Cummis & Gross, Topology, Uma Flowers, Valley Bank, and Whiting Turner.
The Morristown Jazz & Blues Festival will take place on Saturday, August 16, in Morristown, starting at noon. Admission is free and many local restaurants will be offering specials for festival attendees. Bring your lawn chairs and blankets.
