Today and tonight signify Friday, July 17.
SEQUIM — This summer’s Jazz in the Alley concert is a bittersweet one.
Sarah Shea, the Sequim-bred songbird, flew off to Seattle last December and has been performing in bistros and clubs there ever since.
Now she’s back for the weekend, singing at Victor’s Lavender farm today, at the Sequim Lavender Growers Association Street Fair later this afternoon and headlining the ninth annual Jazz in the Alley on Saturday night.
Neil Culbertson, the late director of Jazz in the Alley and a musician himself, booked Shea along with her band Chez Jazz some time ago.
Shea follows in the high-heeled footsteps of Tracy Blume, the singer who, along with Culbertson, began Jazz in the Alley during Sequim’s Lavender Festival nearly a decade ago.
The jazz players who backed Blume are now beside Shea: bassist Ted Enderle, drummer Tom Svornich, saxophonist Craig Buhler and pianist Gert Wiitala.
“It’s an honor,” said Shea, who has been adding numbers such as “The Waters of March,” “Beautiful Love” and “No More Blues” to her songbook.
But Culbertson will be missed at Saturday’s concert. He died of a heart attack July 4 at age 63.
“It was very sudden . . . devastating,” Deborah Norman, his friend and colleague at the BrokersGroup real estate office in Sequim, said this week.
Norman and the BrokersGroup, a longtime sponsor of Jazz in the Alley, opted to go on with the event this weekend.
Whether Jazz in the Alley will continue beyond this year is a decision yet to be made, she said.
“We’re going to announce that there will be a memorial gathering; it will be informal” at 1 p.m. this Sunday at the BrokersGroup, added Norman.
“We’ll ask those who knew and loved Neil to please come.”
In addition to his real estate work, Culbertson played keyboards in the Buck Ellard Band, a country and rock outfit. Ellard will sing a few songs in tribute at Sunday afternoon’s gathering; then Ellard’s band will turn their Sunday evening dance at the Sequim Prairie Grange Hall into a celebration of Culbertson’s life.
The dance will go from 5:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. Sunday at the grange, 290 Macleay Road.
“Neil had a heart for the community,” Norman said, adding that his Jazz in the Alley changed over the years from a multi-venue event to a single free concert.
Then Blume moved away in 2009. Culbertson was the one who kept it going, Norman said.
“We all decided” at the BrokersGroup, that “Neil, if you want to do it, we’re behind you.”
