Vita West Muir is the founder and executive/artistic director of Litchfield Performing Arts, Inc. (1981- present). She continues to develop all the nonprofit’s programs, starting with a top-flight classical series that lasted 20 years with artists like the Cleveland, Tokyo, and Emerson String Quartets, many arts-in-education residencies including Project Poetry Live! which served thousands of middle schoolers across Connecticut for 25 years and received a major US Department of Education award. Muir is the force behind the internationally acclaimed Litchfield Jazz Festival (since 1996), presenting superstars like Dave Brubeck, Roy Haynes, Ray Charles and Wayne Shorter and discovering exciting newcomers like Diana Krall, Brad Mehldau and Christian McBride. In 1997 she launched Litchfield Jazz Camp which now hosts 300 students for a month each summer and provides need-based scholarships.

Muir began her career, after receiving a degree in biology from Fordham University, as a writer documenting the BioMedical Results of the Apollo Program for NASA and later freelancing for Reader’s Digest and other magazines. She made the transition to arts presenter serendipitously when she moved her family into a large historic home in Litchfield CT and welcomed in the community. That effort became a not-for-profit in 1983.

Muir has served on the Litchfield board since its founding, on the boards of the Connecticut Commission on the Arts, the Connecticut Junior Republic, and Young Audiences.  She has received numerous awards for her work, including the Governor’s Award for Culture and Tourism, a Paul Harris Medal, and awards from the DAR, Chamber Music America, the National Endowment for the Arts, the first CultureMax Lifetime Achievement Award, The Elizabeth L. Mahaffey Arts Administration Fellowship, the Inge Morath Award and others. Most recently, she is a 2018 Honoree of the Connecticut Women’s Hall of Fame.  From her perspective, however, all these pale in comparison with the hundreds upon hundreds of happy, productive, arts-imbued lives her work has launched.

Peter Adomeit, of West Hartford CT is Professor of Law Emeritus, Western New England University School of Law, earning his B.A. from Carleton College and his J.D. from the University of Minnesota School of Law. His specialities are dispute resolution and labor law. It was through his children that Peter discovered Litchfield Jazz Camp. His son, Matthew, a dual degree graduate of Oberlin Conservatory and College, is a professional jazz bassist.  He received his Masters Degree in Jazz Bass Performance in the EUJAM program from the Conservatorium van Amsterdam, having also studied as part of this program at the Copenhagen Rhythmic Music Conservatory and the Jazz Institute of Berlin. Matthew attended and then worked at the Litchfield Jazz Camp as an RA and combo bassist. Peter’s daughter River, also a bassist, attended Camp for three summers. She is a graduate of Oberlin and holds a Master of Music in Music Technology from Southern Utah University. She is enrolled in the two year Jazz Masters Degree program at the of Conservatorium van Amsterdam. As Litchfield Jazz Camp and the Litchfield Festival grew, so did Peter’s commitment to Litchfield Performing Arts. He is delighted, he says, to have been elected to the Board of Directors.

Justin lives in Ridgefield, CT with his wife, Denise, and son, Charley. Charley did his second year at camp this summer – one week on drums and another week on piano. Justin is a musician too. He has been playing guitar, bass and drums for nearly 30 years, including a few years as a private instructor. Professionally, Justin helps manage a group of companies in the residential and commercial interiors industry. His role includes strategy, technology and marketing oversite for businesses in New York, Miami and San Francisco.

Peter McEachern, a Connecticut native, has toured and recorded three CD’s for Polygram with Blues legend Clarence “Gatemouth” Brown; has worked and recorded with minimalist composer Lamonte Young, and is featured on several important CD’s: Insomnia with the Thomas Chapin Trio on Knitting Factory Works and Song for Septet, with the Mario Pavone Septet on the New World Countercurrents label. Song for Septet was chosen one of the “Top Ten Jazz CDs of 1995” by The New York Times. In addition, Peter recorded the Wendy Chambers piece, A Mass for Mass Trombones on the Centaur label. He received a fellowship for music composition from the Connecticut Commission on the Arts in 2001. He is a member of The CT Composing Improvisers Project which includes Stephen Haynes, Mario Pavone, and 2010 Grammy winner David Darling. The group has an unreleased recording. Currently he is the Chairman of the Music Department at Salisbury School,  and is a busy freelance artist in the tri-state area. Peter has been a teaching artist at the Litchfield Jazz Camp since 1998. He has released 2 CD’s in the past year No Chordtet featuring Dave Santoro, George Sovak and Hamir Atwal as well as Shockwave featuring the late Thomas Chapin, Steve Johns, Mario Pavone and Jamie Finegan.

Adrian Jones is a Portfolio Manager and Senior Research Analyst at First Eagle Investment Management, an investment management firm with approximately $140 billion in assets. He joined First Eagle in 2018 where he helped launch and now manages their Global Value retail SMA strategies, with approximately $2 billion in assets. From 2007-2017 he was a Senior Research Analyst at King Street Capital Management, a $20 billion hedge fund where he invested in debt and equity securities. Previously, from 1998-2007 he was co-founder and co-portfolio manager for Artemis Partners, L.P., a long-short equity hedge fund. He also co-managed from 1997-2003 the Furman Selz ING Large Cap GARP product, a concentrated equity strategy for retail SMA programs and institutional clients. Adrian began his career in investment banking at Lazard Freres & Co. before joining Soros Fund Management in 1992. He graduated in 1987 with a BA in History of Art from Yale University.

Mr. Jones is married with two college age children, one of whom has attended Litchfield Jazz Camp for five years. From 2001-2017 he served on the board of the River Club of New York, most recently as First Vice President. He also actively supports Hip to Hip Theatre Company (a Shakespeare troupe dedicated to bringing free performances to under-served communities in New York City) and several educational institutions.

Mary Pavone is the widow of former LPA officer and director, composer and bassist Mario Pavone. Primarily, her education in accounting and business management is from hands on experience. Mary attended the University of Connecticut for two years and received an associate degree in business management, based on competency, from Community College of Vermont.

Her professional career spanned 47 years in association with Prospect Machine Products, a contract manufacturing company that her father founded in 1950. Mary became President of Prospect Machine in 1982 and she became owner of the operation in 2006. She retired in 2013, having sold her business to another family member. 

Mary is a past president of the Smaller Manufacturers Association of Connecticut and has served as a director of Connecticut Business and Industry Association (CBIA). She has also served on advisory boards of Naugatuck Valley Community College and W. F. Kaynor Regional Technical High School. Mary served as Vice President of the Prospect Chamber of Commerce where she created an Education Committee.

Having a keen interest in education Mary was instrumental in introducing screw machine (precision turning) manufacturing technology to Kaynor Technical. The greater Waterbury area was second largest in the nation in companies using this manufacturing method at the time. She was one of the founders of a manufacturing training center for entry-level and semi-skilled workers at the Waterbury Adult Education Technical Center and was active in the establishment of the Advanced Manufacturing Technology Center at Naugatuck Valley Community College.

Mary, and her late husband Mario, have been avid supporters of Litchfield Performing Arts, the Litchfield Jazz Camp, and the Litchfield Jazz Festival since day one of the Festival and Camp’s existence. Their son Michael Pavone attended Berklee College of Music and is a working jazz guitarist in the Washington D.C., West Virginia, Maryland triangle. She is the grandmother of Julian Pavone and the late Isabella Pavone and great-grandmother of Gabriella, Natalia, Logan, and Axel Pavone.

Martin Brayboy recently retired from a 36-year career in the insurance industry, first for 11 years on the insurer side and for the remainder in group insurance brokerage-employee benefits.  He has served as a Director for the YMCA Northwest CT since 2005 and an Officer for Psi Upsilon Foundation since 2006. In 2020, upon his retirement, he joined the Harwinton Land Trust as a Director. Martin joined the Litchfield Performing Arts Board of Directors in 2021. His hobbies include skiing, golf, wine and a capella singing. Martin says his parents introduced him to what has become a lifetime appreciation of jazz and remembers fondly that he took his Ma to the first Litchfield Jazz Festival at White Memorial Foundation in 1996.

Paula Sanders is Joseph and Joanna Nazro Mullen Professor in Humanities and Professor of History at Rice University. She earned her BA from Northwestern University and her MA and PhD from Princeton University. Her specialties are the history of the Islamic world in the Middle Ages and the history of medieval Jewish communities in the lands of Islam. She is formerly Dean of Graduate & Postdoctoral Studies and Vice Provost for Academic Affairs at Rice, where she currently serves as Director of the Boniuk Institute for Religious Tolerance, where she created the Arts of Tolerance program (currently on hiatus due to COVID). She is the proud aunt of two Litchfield alums, Matthew and River Adomeit. She is delighted to have been appointed to the Litchfield Performing Arts board, where she hopes to help foster connections to schools and arts organizations on the Gulf Coast.

Raul Orlando Edwards has been an outstanding contributor in enriching and nurturing the creativity in the Hispanic community through multidiscipline art programs that include music, dance, theatre, film, literature and others. He has the honorable distinction of receiving recognition from four consecutive City of Houston’s Mayors – Brown, White, Parker, and Turner. Raul has been involved in over 100 community and arts initiatives promoting health, cultural diversity, inclusion, equality, healthy eating, and other social issues. Seeing the lack of representation and inclusion in Houston’s Latin American art scene, in 2006 he launched FLAMART (Featuring Latin American Music and ART) with the mission of presenting and celebrating all groups that make up Latin culture. Raúl’s creativity extends to his ability to establish, manage and lead programs/organizations in achieving their potential. Essential to his vision is that all art-forms are presented with the dignity and respect they deserve. In 2017, Raul was invited by Rice University Boniuk Institute to launch Arts of Tolerance, an outreach program using the arts to educate and share the message of tolerance and inclusion. In his three years as its Executive Director, he led the organization in over 30 collaborations reaching over 17,000 in audience until the program was suspended due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Radio, television and printed press have collectively featured his work over 50 times, with awards and recommendations in equal numbers. Over 100 staged productions from coast to coast summarize the community and artistic ingenuity he possess, showcasing the character and motivating source that has become his life’s mission. In his free time he explores visual arts; volunteers for community events; engages in cuisine conversations with foodies and chefs; partakes in fitness activities; and enjoys a robust glass of red wine with friends.

Saxophonist, flutist, composer and educator, Don Braden’s jazz career spans 40 years. He has toured the world with Betty Carter, Wynton Marsalis, Tony Williams, Freddie Hubbard, Roy Haynes, and others and performed on Saturday Night Live, at Carnegie Hall, Harvard University (where was an engineering undergrad), and countless jazz festivals and clubs. He has over 100 CDs as a sideman and 25 as a leader, the most recent his critically acclaimed Earth Wind and Wonder Vol 2. Don has written 150 pieces for ensembles from duos to full orchestras, including one for Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands, and over 100 songs for jazz combos. His compositions appear on dozens of CDs, TV shows and indie films. In 2000, he received a Doris Duke Foundation New Works grant and adjudicates for them and for SURDNA, the Downbeat Student Music Awards, and others. He teaches at Prins Claus Conservatoire in the Netherlands and at Montclair State University. He ran NJPAC’s Jazz for Teens for 15 years and also led the Harvard University Monday Jazz Band. Don believes that jazz is a great music style to study because it reflects so many important aspects of life, including creativity, discipline, teamwork, leadership, listening skills, democracy, supportiveness and improvisation. 

Don has been Music Director of Litchfield Jazz Camp since 1998 and served two terms as President of the board of directors of Litchfield Performing Arts in the early 2000’s.

Mark Ferguson received a Bachelor of Architecture from Carnegie-Mellon University in 1978 and Master of Architecture from Princeton University in 1982. He apprenticed at firms in Pittsburgh, Boston and Princeton before moving to New York City in 1982. His early work on renovations to houses in Tuxedo Park and Croton-on-Hudson introduced him to traditional architecture. The experience led him to a position at Parish-Hadley Associates where he collaborated with interior decorators and artisans in the creation of new residences guided by traditional design principles. While at Parish-Hadley, he joined forces with Oscar Shamamian, and in 1988, they established the firm known today as Ferguson & Shamamian Architects. Mark also has served as the Dean of the School of Architecture and Planning at the Catholic University of America since 2020.

For 45 years, I was a computer programmer/analyst/manager for Aetna, Travelers and SS&C Technologies. My area of interest was using various programming languages to help design and develop state-of-the-art computer-based solutions for critical data processing related issues. I specialized in supporting the financial investment group in integrating, storing and analyzing data from sources like Bloomberg, Reuters, IDC, and others to provide information on strategies for increasing profit margins. In 1977 I earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in Mathematics with a statistical concentration from Central CT State University.

Now retired from my corporate commitments, I work extensively with my son, pianist Zaccai Curtis, at our business, Truth Revolution Recording Collective LLC, a recording label\brand that has put out over 70 titles by major recording artists in the jazz and Latin jazz genres. 

These days, I spend as much time as I can with my wife Abby, grandchildren, sons—musicians Zaccai, Damian and Luques Curtis—family and friends. My hobbies are listening to live and recorded music, solving puzzles and playing various sports that interest my grandchildren.