Damien Sneed Trio

AN UNFORGETTABLE ON-STAGE EXPERIENCE | At this event, the Vilar Mainstage will transform into a club-like setting where the artists and audience members will be on-stage, together. Attendees can choose theater-style General Admission Seats or Reserved Seating at 2-top tables. Sit just feet away from the artists as they bring every note to life in an intimate, up-close experience. This isn’t just a concert—it’s a moment you’ll feel in your soul.

Damien Sneed, piano and vocals
Michael Olatuja, bass
Otis Brown III, drums
Anthony Hervey, trumpet

As a multi-genre recording artist and instrumentalist, Damien Sneed is a pianist, vocalist, organist, composer, conductor, arranger, producer, and arts educator whose work spans multiple genres. He has worked with jazz, classical, pop, and R&B legends, including the late Aretha Franklin and Jessye Norman, which he is featured on Norman’s final recording, Bound For The Promised Land on Albany Records. He also worked with Wynton Marsalis, Stevie Wonder, Diana Ross, Ashford & Simpson, J’Nai Bridges, Lawrence Brownlee, Brandie Inez Sutton and many others. Sneed has served as music director for Grammy Award-winning gospel artists The Clark Sisters, Richard Smallwood, Donnie McClurkin, Hezekiah Walker, Marvin Sapp, Karen Clark Sheard, Dorinda Clark-Cole and Kim Burrell, among others. Sneed is a 2020 Dove Award winner and 2021 NAACP Image Award winner for his work as a featured producer and writer on the Clark Sisters’ newest project, “The Return”, released on March 13, 2020.
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Sneed is the founder and artistic director of Chorale Le Chateau, which has gained a global reputation for its vivid interpretations of vocal literature, from Renaissance period pieces to art songs to jazz, spirituals, gospel, and avant-garde contemporary music. He is featured on the recording of Wynton Marsalis’ Abyssinian Mass as a conductor, with Marsalis, the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra and Chorale Le Chateau.

American trumpeter Anthony Hervey is 2015 alumni of the famed Vail Jazz Workshop, returning to Vail after 10 years of education and stellar career development. Hervey now leads his own band called the Anthony Hervey Quintet, was recently named by Grammy.com as one of the “10 Emerging Artists to Know,” and is frequently called upon to substitute for trumpet legend Wynton Marsalis, who has mentored him and describes Hervey as “a beautiful trumpet player of the first magnitude,” Hervey has also toured, performed, and recorded with luminaries such as Christian McBride, Jon Batiste, and Michael Bublé.