What do B.B. King, Stevie Nicks, Foo Fighters, Macy Gray, Bob Dylan, Tom Petty, Bonnie Raitt, and Santana have in common? They’ve all heeded Jim Horowitz’s call to come to Pitkin County (population: 16,640) and perform on open-air stages backed by the Elk Mountains.

An aspiring lawyer turned jazz pianist turned agent, Horowitz started Jazz Aspen Snowmass (JAS), a nonprofit that has generated more than $10 million for Colorado music education programs, in 1991. His first event, held in downtown Aspen’s Benedict Music Tent, grew into today’s four-day JAS June Experience, the year-round JAS Café concert series, and the organization’s marquee offering, the Labor Day Experience. Every year, as many as 10,000 people descend on Snowmass Town Park to groove to genre-spanning acts typically found in massive arenas.

We caught up with Horowitz in advance of this year’s fest (August 29 to 31, featuring headliners Imagine Dragons, Lenny Kravitz, and Luke Combs), where he and JAS will be inducted into the Colorado Music Hall of Fame.

Editor’s note: The following conversation has been edited for length and clarity. 

Jim Horowitz
Jim Horowitz. Photo by Steve Mundinger, courtesy of Jazz Aspen Snowmass

5280: What moved you to found JAS?
Jim Horowitz: I had booked a tour in Europe, and the last stop was this amazing festival in a small medieval village in southwestern France. It was called Jazz in Marciac, and that festival changed my life. It became my inspiration: the format, the sophistication, the music, the crowd, everything about it. It took place in a tent on a rugby field.

It was 1989, and it happened that I was going straight from that trip to visit my parents, who were in Aspen. The next day, we went to a concert at the Benedict Music Tent, and I said, “I’m going to start a festival right here in Aspen, in this tent; that’s my new plan in life.” They looked at me like, Really?

How do you get such big names?
You just invite them. And you pay them. Airline tickets to here are twice as expensive, but it’s the cost of doing business. Our festival has a great reputation. Artists love coming here; they like the way they’re treated. They love the quality of the audience, the reception, the warmth. The bigger problem at this point is that everybody wants to come back all the time.

Photo courtesy of Jazz Aspen Snowmass

Can you pick out a favorite JAS memory?
Keith Urban, in 2013. It was one of those summer days where the sky was kind of gray and soupy, not that beautiful bluebird Colorado sky we love so much. When it’s an outdoor festival and you look at the sky and it looks funky, you don’t get to reschedule. It didn’t get worse, it didn’t rain, but by show time, it had been dark all day and the clouds were even lower. The band, like 10 people with horns and backups, played great for about 30 minutes, and then it started to rain, lightly and steadily. Your heart is sinking, if you’re in charge—I am just going, Oh no, this is gonna get canceled. The song ended, and there was a pause. And, by the way, nobody had left. These are Colorado people; they come dressed. Everybody had their coats. But you’re going, What’s going to happen?

Keith took a breath, and he said, “OK, fellas, y’all just get off the stage. I don’t want to worry about you and your electric equipment. I’ll take it from here.” And what happened was Keith puts the electric guitar down, and he picks up an acoustic guitar. He proceeded to do an hour uninterrupted. It never stopped raining, and every song that he sang was a song with the word “rain” in it. It was complete magic.