38th Annual Delaware Water Gap Celebration of the Arts (COTA) Jazz Festival

The Delaware Water Gap Celebration of the Arts is proud to unveil the 2015 festival poster, designed by Jim Frantz and featuring COTA co-founder Rick Chamberlain, who lost his battle to cancer in March. Jim Frantz, a good friend of Chamberlain’s, wanted to help honor his friend and began his design with a photograph of Rick taken by local photographer Laurie Samet, which perfectly captures the essence of Chamberlain and his passions.

Jim Frantz is a born and raised Stroudsburg resident and works as an industrial designer doing product design & graphic design. He also has many creative pursuits of diverse disciplines. Jim has 4 children, if you count his two dogs.

Laurie Samet, a native of East Stroudsburg, has been taking pictures since her college days in the late 1970s. At that time her interests were sports and candid portraiture. Her attention turned to jazz photography in 2005, and since then she has enjoyed an abundance of opportunity to photograph musicians in rehearsal, in live performance, and in the recording studio. In recent years her photographs have appeared on several CDs as both cover and liner art. She has participated in the Music Motif Art Show at the COTA Jazz Festival for many years and shared a show with her father, Sherwood Samet, at the Dutot Museum in 2012. She is honored that her photograph of Rick Chamberlain was chosen to represent COTA 2015. She is a physical therapist in private practice in East Stroudsburg.

The Delaware Water Gap Celebration of the Arts (COTA) was founded in 1978 by NEA Jazz Master Phil Woods, the late Ed Joubert, and the late Rick Chamberlain. The idea was, and still is, to share with the community the art created by the many world-class musicians and artists that call the area home. The premise was simple: musicians are local or locally connected and everyone plays for the same small honorarium, which has enabled a sponsor-free event for 38 years. This year will be no different with a great combination of the different musical genres that Chamberlain loved and performed, along with a two hour long tribute to the festival’s good friend Eric Doney; pianist, composer and mentor, who also lost his battle to cancer this year.

The festival takes place the weekend after Labor Day, September 11, 12, and 13, 2015. The festival begins on Friday night at the Dutot Museum at 6:00 PM with a musically themed art show and reception, followed by theater, dance, poetry and classical music at the Presbyterian Church of the Mountain from 7:00 -9:30 PM (tickets are $10.00). The festival’s Main Stage kicks off at noon on Saturday with bands every hour until 8:00 PM, and then again on Sunday at 10:00 AM with a free Jazz Mass. The Main Stage jazz

performances begin Sunday at 12:15 PM and continue until 8:45 PM. Tickets for one day are $28.00, $40.00 for a 2-day ticket (available on Saturday only). Students and seniors are $15.00 per day. Children between 5 and 12 years are $10.00 per day while those under 5 are free.  Read more...