At 10:30 p.m. each Thursday, John D’earth’s band has performed at Miller’s in Charlottesville. He’s done that for about forty years. And he’s been playing the trumpet even longer – taking it up at the age of eight. As a teenager he was on stage at the Newport Jazz Festival, and this month, he’ll headline the free jazz fest in Salem’s Longwood Park with a new vocalist – Richmond’s Laura Ann Singh.
“John and I have been in each other’s orbit for a while,” she says. “We have a lot of mutual friends and colleagues, We have recorded a lot of his music and some of Dawn’s songs.”
Dawn Thompson was John’s partner and wife. They had worked together since he was 21, and he was in awe of the lyrics and songs that she wrote — railing against the impersonal, corporate world and foretelling the climate crisis…