The 12th annual South Coast Jazz Music Festival will be taking place from Friday, August 8 to Sunday, August 10, 2025.
The South Coast Cultural Society’s festival will take place over the course of three days and at a variety of venues including Brantford’s Harmony Square, Sanderson Centre for the Performing Arts and the Glenhyrst Art Gallery and Gardens, as well as the Schofield Bistro in Port Dover.
Juliann Kuchocki, founding director and producer of the South Coast Jazz Music Festival, said that the event first started 12 years ago and has been growing ever since.
“We originally started in Norfolk County between a couple of wineries, and we’ve since been all over the place in a dozen different venues, and of course, now we’re in two cities, we’re online, and we’re shooting for television and Video on Demand too,” she said. “This event is interesting because while we are a music festival, we’ve also branched into other different streams of the performing and visual arts, as well as culture.”
Queen Mary the Artist will kick off the event with a free performance at Harmony Square on Friday, August 8 at 6:00 p.m.. The professional jazz singer has performed on stages across Canada, the United States and South America.
The festival continues on Saturday, August 9 at 7:00 p.m. when legendary Canadian rock band, Lighthouse, performs at the Sanderson Centre. Lighthouse first came onto the scene in 1969 and is known for fusing rock, jazz and classical music. Between 1970 and 1974, the band was awarded four Juno Awards, four gold albums and Canada’s first platinum album for their album Lighthouse Live!
Laura Fernandez, an award-winning visual artist, pianist, singer-songwriter, and the producer and host of Café Latino on JazzFM91, will act as master of ceremonies during the recorded event.
Local favourites Avery Raquel and David Griffin will also be performing in the show, as well as Jesse Murphy, Micahel Bell and Kevin Barret, Mya Chappell, Fernandez and more.
Tickets for the big event cost $40 per person and guarantees a seat at all of the festival’s events.
The third and final day will feature two shows, the first of which will be at Glenhyrst Art Gallery from 1 p.m. to 3 p.m., and includes performances from Jesse Murphy, Mya Chappell, Gail Fuller and more.
The second and last show of the festival will then take place at the Schofield Bistro in Port Dover from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m., with live entertainment from artists Michael Bell, Kevin Barrett and Kateryna Khon.
Kuchocki said that while putting on the three-day festival takes a lot of work, being able to provide residents with an opportunity to experience live music, much of which comes from local and Canadian artists, is something she and her team are incredibly proud of.
“It’s so much work to put this on year after year, but we’re so grateful to be in this position of creating things and watching them come to life like this; we’re very lucky to have achieved what we have and it’s worth all of the work in the end because music is healing. All you have to do is look at something like the Alzheimer’s Society and the music memory work they do, that’s just one example of the effect that music has on people,” she said. “It doesn’t matter if you’re playing a video game, if you’re watching your cartoons or your favourite sitcom or whatever, music is everywhere and jazz is everywhere, and it definitely has an impact on people and the stories around us. Music’s a language and when it’s done well, it’s understood across the board and it’s just timeless. And when it comes to live performance? Artificial Intelligence can’t do what some of our performers are going to do for the people who come out.”
“People like getting out and doing something new and with this world that we’re living in, the more opportunities we can create to bring people together to have a good time and relax and, sing and dance, the better,” she continued.
Kuchocki added that another benefit to the event is the effect it has on the local economy.
“We usually have anywhere from 40 to 60 different partners that are participating in the main event annually and so we co-market between the businesses. We try to boost the economy and get everyone involved so that everyone can benefit, especially the small businesses,” she said. Not only does it create an opportunity for the community to engage with the arts in a very inclusive and diverse way where there is something for everybody, but people travel for the event, they spend some money on gas, they eat somewhere, they stay overnight and that helps keep all those businesses going. The more territory you’re covering, the more community input you get and the more community output is created aswell.”
The organizer said the event wouldn’t be possible without the various partnerships and funding they’ve been able to receive.
“We have Ontario Creates and the Ontario Arts Council, who are our two main funders for this festival, but we also have the Brant Community Foundation too and OLG Canada has just come on as well and with that addition, it’s helped to make three of our four shows completely free which is awesome,” she said. “It just goes to show you that when you branch out and go into different communities, you can get more partners, offer more things and create more programming. I really have to do a special thank you to our sponsors and to our incredible, hardworking team because it’s taken a while to bounce back from the pandemic, and without all the funding and without the work for our small team, this just wouldn’t be possible.”
Kimberly De Jong’s reporting is funded by the Canadian government through its Local Journalism Initiative.The funding allows her to report rural and agricultural stories from Blandford-Blenheim and Brant County. Reach her at kimberly.dejong@brantbeacon.ca.
