Name: Eau Claire Jazz Festival 2025
Start: 2025-04-11T08:00:00-05:00
End: 2025-04-12T00:00:00-05:00
Location: Pablo Center at the Confluence

The Eau Claire Jazz Festival
Friday & Saturday April 11th-12th, 2025
The Eau Claire Jazz Festival is a regional music festival, dedicated to educating, entertaining and promoting jazz. Since 1967, the Eau Claire Jazz Festival has maintained a standard of excellence in jazz education and performance. This educational and cultural jazz festival has earned its distinction as one of the oldest and largest events by providing local, national and international artists the opportunity to showcase their creative work and by highlighting the enduring elements and important directions in this distinctly American music. Furthermore, the Eau Claire Jazz Festival is the largest student run festival in the United States. With a board made of community members to oversee, University of Wisconsin - Eau Claire students perform all duties needed in order to support the festival making it one of a kind.
TICKET AND EVENT INFORMATION: www.eauclairejazz.com

FESTIVAL EVENTS
~ Jazz Crawl | Friday April 11th | Barstow Street Eau Claire, WI
Jazz Crawl is the transformation of downtown Eau Claire into a New York jazz scene. Here, you can explore over 40 exceptional music groups at 17 different venues (all-ages and 21+). This year, our groups will be featuring a variety of music styles including ragtime, blues, acoustic, and big band. Join over 3,000 people and enjoy this once a year celebration!
Explore over 25 indoor/outdoor venues for just a $20 wristband. ($25 week of) Children 10 and under are FREE. Proceeds support our Eau Claire Jazz Festival educational programs.
~ Concert Series | April 11th-12th | Pablo Center
Join us for an incomparable weekend of jazz! On the evenings of April 11th and 12th, GRAMMY-nominated UW-Eau Claire Jazz I will perform with two internationally-acclaimed guest artists John Clayton and Camille Thurman.
Bassist, Composer, Arranger and Producer, John Clayton, is a busy man. He is a Grammy© winner with nine additional nominations and has written and/or recorded with artists such as Milt Jackson, Diana Krall, Paul McCartney, Regina Carter, Dee Dee Bridgewater, Gladys Knight, Queen Latifah, McCoy Tyner, YoYo Ma and Charles Aznavour, to name only a few.
John was the principal bassist in the Amsterdam Philharmonic Orchestra (The Netherlands) from 1980-1984.
It is John’s arrangement of the “Star Spangled Banner” that helped propel Whitney Houston in her 1990 performance at the Super Bowl (the recording went platinum). His recordings with the Clayton Brothers, the Clayton-Hamilton Jazz Orchestra, Milt Jackson, Monty Alexander, Count Basie and others are plentiful. John feels “I’ve been guided by a village of musicians who helped me understand the humility that goes along with playing music at the highest level you can. Ray Brown used to tell me to ‘Learn how to play the bass!!’ Just take care of the music and it will take care of you.” In 1986, John co-founded the Clayton-Hamilton Jazz Orchestra and rekindled The Clayton Brothers Quintet. In addition to his individual clinics and workshops, he also directs the educational components of Centrum, The Port Townsend Jazz Festival, and the Vail Jazz Workshop.
Camille Thurman made history, becoming the first woman in 30 years to tour, record, and perform full-time internationally with the world-renowned Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra as a saxophonist/woodwind doubler (2018-2020 season). A respected bandleader, she has headlined numerous notable concert venues and jazz festivals worldwide, including the Kennedy Center, The Library of Congress, and the Rose Theater. Currently, she is an Assistant Professor of Jazz Performance at McGill University.
The New York City native has amassed several distinctive honors for her musicianship: NAACP Image Award Nominee for Outstanding Jazz Album, recipient of the SOUTH Arts Creative Jazz Road Artistic Residency, Downbeat Magazine’s Critics Poll Nominee for Rising Star Tenor Saxophonist and Vocalist and Rising New Artist (2023, 2022, 2021 & 2020), two-time winner of the ASCAP Herb Alpert Young Jazz Composers Award, a recipient of the Fulbright Scholars Cultural Ambassador Grant and Chamber Music of America Performance Plus Grant (Sponsored by the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation) among others. Thurman also has five full-length recordings as a leader to her credit. Her most recent project, “Confluence: Vol 1,” is a collaboration with master drummer Darrell Green and his quartet.
~ Master Classes & Student Sessions
April 11th-12th | UWEC Campus
Once a year, we are humbled by the time and energy our iconic jazz artists offer visiting students through the Eau Claire Jazz Master Classes. Both students and educators find exceptional value in the insight our world-class jazz masters share through their presentations, performance, and Q&A session. Be ready with questions or just be ready to be blown away. Our Master Classes do not disappoint!
Jazz students have been learning and growing at the Eau Claire Jazz Festival for decades. This year is even more dynamic than ever before. We've paired an impressive roster of adjudicators along with some of the most inspiring jazz icons to create an exceptional experience for your schools.

Hosted by Eau Claire Jazz Inc.
The mission of Eau Claire Jazz Inc. is to inspire, educate and entertain. We create a vibrant, growing community which celebrates high-quality Jazz music through engaging performances and investments in Jazz education to build the future of this unique, original American art form. In the tradition of luminaries who made northwestern Wisconsin an inspirational center for Jazz education for decades, ECJI's vision is to extend the reach of its word-class Jazz experiences to new local, regional, and national audiences. Through deeper partnerships with UW-Eau Claire, our community and music educators at all levels, ECJI will maintain and enhance the quality of our annual events, invest in the success of UW-Eau Claire's Jazz Studies program and establish new performance and educational opportunities to carry the torch of Jazz to the next generation of performers, musicians, and audiences.