"We're not giving up on joy."
That's Ron Bocian, the artistic director behind St. Michael's Jazz Fest and founder of the Euphoria Brass Band, talking about why a church lawn one block from the Carlsbad Village train station has turned into one of the more unlikely music venues in North County. Most people who've lived here a few years know the festival. It's free, it's loud in the best way, and it shows up on the calendar every September. What most people don't know is that the festival is just the one day a year the rest of the neighborhood notices.
The other fifty-two Sundays, it's already happening. Quietly. At half volume. For free.
The Festival Filled a Hole, It Didn't Dig One
St. Michael's by-the-Sea Episcopal Church sits at 2775 Carlsbad Boulevard, close enough to the coastal bluffs that you can smell the ocean from the lawn. Before the Jazz Fest existed, Carlsbad had a different music tradition: the Carlsbad Music Festival, a multi-venue event that used to scatter performances across town, with St. Michael's as one of its regular stops. When the Carlsbad Music Festival shut down during the Covid years, that slot in the town's calendar just went dark.
A parishioner named Stambaugh, working with the support of the congregation, didn't try to replace the old festival citywide. He built something smaller and specific: a Sunday afternoon jazz service called Jazz Evensong, right there at the church, four to five thirty, free to anyone who wandered in. The Jazz Fest came later as the loud, public-facing version of a habit that was already running every week. This year marks its third annual run, on September 26.
Father Doran, the priest who closes each Evensong with a short blessing after the last note fades, has talked about what pulled him toward the music in the first place, describing jazz as carrying resistance and defiant joy inside it. That's not incidental framing. It's the actual reason a church, of all places, ended up hosting some of the best live jazz in the Village on a weekly basis instead of an annual one.
The Quintet Nobody Puts on a Flyer
Here's the detail that gets lost every year: the house band for Jazz Evensong has names, just like the festival lineup does. Saxophonist Keith Bishop, pianist Leonard Thompson, guitarist Joey Carano, bassist Gunnar Biggs and drummer Bob Weller make up the Jazz Evensong Quintet, and they play most Sundays throughout the year, not just the weeks leading up to the festival. If you've walked past St. Michael's on a Sunday afternoon and heard music drifting over Carlsbad Boulevard, that's them.
This is the part of the story a one-day festival write-up skips. The festival gets press because it's loud, it's once a year, and it pulls touring acts onto a church lawn that most people wouldn't expect to see there. The Evensong gets nothing, because a quiet Sunday habit doesn't generate a news cycle. But if you're actually living in the Village, the weekly version is the one you can build a routine around. The festival is the version you plan a Saturday around once a year.
What's Actually Playing This Year
The 2026 lineup runs from 10:30 in the morning until dusk on September 26, spread across two stages with fourteen bands total. This year's headliner is Monette Marino Keita, fronting an Afro-beat outfit built around the kind of rhythm section that gets a lawn full of people on their feet. Euphoria Brass Band, Bocian's own seven-piece New Orleans-inspired group, plays second to last, right before a short parade at 6:45 that loops the campus and leads into their set. The Jazz Evensong Quintet gets folded into the day too, slotted in as the sixth band on the bill, so the group that plays free every Sunday afternoon also gets a turn on the festival stage.
Last year's second annual festival pulled in the Grammy-winning Rebirth Brass Band as its headliner, alongside Gilbert Castellanos Latin Jazz Ensemble, Sue Palmer and Her Motel Swing Orchestra, Starsign and Chunky Hustle Brass Band. The lineup changes year to year. What doesn't change is the Quintet playing quietly every week in between.
Admission is free, with suggested donations welcomed to help keep the whole thing running without a ticket price. Bring your own lawn chair or blanket since seating is limited to a handful of benches. Dogs are welcome on leash. If you're walking or biking from anywhere in the Village, you're a few minutes away. If you're driving, there's free street parking around the church and the Army and Navy Academy, plus the public lot at the Carlsbad Village train station a short walk from the lawn.
Why the Weekly Version Is the One Worth Knowing About
I've walked past St. Michael's on plenty of ordinary Sundays, the kind with no festival banners up, no extra cars on the block, nothing marking the day as different from any other. And there's music coming off that lawn anyway. That's the part of this story that actually matters if you live in Carlsbad Village year-round instead of just showing up for the one weekend everyone posts about.
A festival is easy to market. A church running a free jazz set fifty-some Sundays a year, with the same five musicians and the same short blessing at the end, is the kind of thing you only find out about by living close enough to walk past it. It's not on a tourism board's top ten list. It doesn't need to be, because the people who already live within earshot don't need convincing. They just need to know it's there.
That's the real difference between visiting Carlsbad Village and actually being from it. Visitors get the loud Saturday in September with the touring headliner and the parade. Residents get the quiet Sunday habit that's been running the whole time, free, most weeks of the year, a few blocks from wherever they happen to be.
If you're heading to the festival on September 26, you'll get the big version. But if you want the version most people miss, show up on an ordinary Sunday afternoon instead, find a spot on the lawn, and listen to Keith Bishop's sax carry over Carlsbad Boulevard while Father Doran waits for the last note to close things out.
That's not a once-a-year event. That's just what Sundays sound like here.
If you ever want to talk about what it actually feels like to live in this part of Carlsbad, not just visit it for a weekend, I'm always happy to compare notes. Let's Connect.
