# WHO ACTUALLY SUPPLIES THE REHOBOTH BEACH JAZZ FESTIVAL Compiled 11 August 2026. Every line sourced; anything unproven is marked UNVERIFIED rather than inferred. ## THE HEADLINE Two desks control half the recurring roster. Twenty of the forty artists who cycle through Rehoboth are booked by either **Steve Butler** (Mighty Music Corporation, Barnegat NJ) or **Fred Hansen** (Reliant Talent Agency jazz division, Nashville/NYC). Add **Eric Talbert** (Entertainment Creative Concepts, LA) and **three individuals control 23 of 40 — 57.5%.** --- ## CLUSTER A — MIGHTY MUSIC CORPORATION (Steve Butler, CEO, founded 2005) Brian Simpson · Marion Meadows · Alex Bugnon · Jackiem Joyner · Jeff Kashiwa · Eric Darius · Four80East · Nicholas Cole · Blake Aaron · Nick Colionne (until his death, 1 Jan 2022) Claimed by Mighty but routed elsewhere on the artist's own site: Kim Waters (also WLA Talent and self-booked), Najee (Pin Drop Management — Fareed Haqq), Jessy J (direct), Art Sherrod Jr (Entertainment Creative Concepts), Althea René (ensemble SKU only). **Mighty Music's own website claims it has "produced" the Rehoboth Beach Jazz Festival and that Butler won "Rehoboth Beach Jazz Festival Producer of the Year."** That award is an honorary community prize handed out from the stage on opening night — 2023 went to the festival's own production manager, 2025 to the publisher of the Cape Gazette, 2026 to a restaurateur. No festival document, no Cape Gazette article, no 990, no city record names Butler or Mighty Music in any capacity. **The production claim is unsupported.** What *is* supported is roster capture: | Edition | Mighty Music roster names on the bill | |---|---| | 2023 | 6 of 13 | | 2024 | 8 of 13 | | 2025 | **10 of 13** | | 2026 | **10 of 13** | Three of the four artists on the 2026 Friday "Night at the Cambria" bill — Nicholas Cole, Jackiem Joyner, Jeff Kashiwa — are Mighty Music roster; Art Sherrod Jr books through Entertainment Creative Concepts (Talbert) per his own site (see above). [Corrected September 2026] ## CLUSTER B — RELIANT TALENT AGENCY, JAZZ DIVISION (Fred Hansen) Peter White · Richard Elliot · Gerald Albright · Vincent Ingala · Euge Groove · Norman Brown · Paul Taylor · Michael Lington · Lindsey Webster · Rick Braun (probable — his 2025 site rebuild deleted the contact page, but he remains on Reliant's live roster). Reliant was founded April 2021 by Steve Lassiter (ex-APA), Matt McGuire and Heath Baumhor; the jazz division launched September 2021 under Hansen. **The management layer amplifies it.** Chapman & Co. Management (Sherman Oaks) has ten clients and routes six of them to Fred Hansen alone. Seven of Chapman's ten are on Shanachie Records. Label concentration mirrors agency concentration mirrors festival concentration. ## CLUSTER C — ENTERTAINMENT CREATIVE CONCEPTS (Eric Talbert, LA) Art Sherrod Jr · Steve Oliver · Ragan Whiteside ## CLUSTER C2 — MAJOR SCALE MANAGEMENT (Gina McCain · ginamccain@majorscalemanagement.com · 703-930-4594 · Washington DC / Maryland / Virginia) Thirteen "exclusive" clients, banner currently reading **"NOW BOOKING FOR THE 2027 | 2028 FESTIVAL SEASON"**: Marcus Anderson · Andréa Lisa · Lin Rountree · Rebecca Jade · Oli Silk · BK Jackson · Ilya Serov · Andrey Chmut · Yuko Mabuchi · Evan Taylor · Tom Braxton · Roberto Restuccia · Marcel Anderson. Source: https://majorscalemanagement.com/artist-roster · https://marcusanderson.net/booking/ **Penetration.** At Rehoboth: Marcus Anderson **9 editions** (2011, 2012, 2014, 2016, 2018, 2020 mini-fest, 2021, 2023, 2026), Rebecca Jade 2023, Lin Rountree 2022. In the Berks/Seabreeze/JazzTrax lineup file: Marcus Anderson 24 billings, Oli Silk 10, Rebecca Jade 9, Lin Rountree 8, Roberto Restuccia 5, Andréa Lisa 4, Ilya Serov 3 — nearly all of them inside Gerald Veasley's Unscripted jams and the Berks all-star recombinations, i.e. the same house-package mechanism Rehoboth uses. **She sells packages as SKUs.** The public "Artist Packages" page lists six pre-bundled combinations — Andréa Lisa & Rebecca Jade · Marcus Anderson & Rebecca Jade · Andrey Chmut & Oli Silk · Andrey Chmut & Marcus Anderson · BK Jackson / Marcus Anderson / Adrian Crutchfield · Tom Braxton & Roberto Restuccia · Yuko Mabuchi & Ilya Serov — photographed in pairs with the instrument printed underneath. Source: https://majorscalemanagement.com/artist-packages **And she runs her own event.** The 2026 West Coast Jazz Cruise, cabins booked through Foster Perry Travel. Management, packaging and the venue in one company. Source: https://majorscalemanagement.com/2026-jazz-cruise ## CLUSTER D — ONE-OFFS Boney James (Independent Artist Group / Mitch Blackman) · Keiko Matsui (MPI Talent) · Brian Culbertson (THE·TEAM Music — Andrea Johnson, Seth Malasky) · Marcus Anderson (Major Scale) · Acoustic Alchemy (MINT Talent) · Steve Cole (Stuart H. Paster & Associates) · Najee (Pin Drop) ## CLUSTER E — SELF-REPRESENTED Gerald Veasley (Flying Vee Music) · Maysa (DeWayne Reed, personal agent) · Matt Marshak (direct) · Jessy J (direct) · Lori Williams (LoriJazz Enterprise) ## UNVERIFIED JJ Sansaverino · Althea René · Damien Escobar · Pieces of a Dream --- ## WHO BOOKS REHOBOTH **Delaware Celebration of Jazz, Inc.** — a real 501(c)(3), EIN 51-0373709, Lewes DE, tax-exempt since 1997. Revenue roughly $1.0–1.1M/yr (FY2024 $1,123,125; FY2025 $1,046,915). **$0 compensation to any officer, every year 2019–2025.** All-volunteer. Four-person board, unchanged across seven years of filings: Dennis "Denny" Santangini (President, ~30 years), Larry Defrancisco (VP Marketing & Sponsorships), Kas Naylor, Harry "Bing" Crosby (Advertising, 18 years). Production manager Tony Clarke. **No named talent buyer is published anywhere. That is itself the finding.** **Brian Simpson has been Musical Director for fifteen years** — confirmed by the festival's own 2026 schedule, the Cape Gazette, and Simpson himself in July 2026. The MD role governs the All-Stars and the Grand Jam, the two shows that determine who gets marquee billing. The MD is a Mighty Music client. **RESOLVED — see `IRS record - Delaware Celebration of Jazz.md` for the full record.** The Schedule L flag is **not** a business-transaction disclosure and the $124,800 is **not** a related-party item — it is an SBA EIDL note payable, named as such in Schedule D. What Schedule L actually discloses, in each of FY2023, FY2024 and FY2025, is a **loan from the organization to its own president, Dennis Santangini** — original principal $15,370, balance due $11,947 → $20,875 → $21,927, sitting on the asset side at Part X line 5. Each return states the loan was **not approved by the board or a committee** and that there is **no written agreement**; the purpose field is blank all three years. The organization also reports four voting directors, **zero of them independent**, and **no written conflict of interest policy, whistleblower policy or document retention policy**, and its financial statements have never been audited, reviewed or compiled. --- ## THE PACKAGE-TOUR ECONOMY Of eleven touring packages checked, exactly **one** is a live roster product at a major agency today: Jazz Funk Soul, sold by Reliant. Jazz Attack, West Coast Jam, BWB, RnR, Sax Pack, Guitars & Saxes and Summer Horns are not inventoried anywhere — their owners could not be identified at all. Guitars & Saxes is the only package with fully documented ownership: created by Bob Engel and John Harrington of Variety Artists in 1995. Now defunct. **Rehoboth doesn't buy packages. It manufactures them.** In 2025, fifteen of twenty-two slots were multi-artist named billings; in 2026, fourteen of twenty-two. House-owned franchises: RBJF All-Stars, the Grand Jam, the Closing Party Buffet, Night at the Cambria (split into Friday *and* Saturday editions for 2026), and the Rehoboth Sexy Saxes — an in-house replacement for the dormant Sax Pack, using two of the same three saxophonists. The festival books roughly thirty artists for a weekend and recombines them into twenty-five ticketed shows. In 2025 the only bought-in touring package on the whole schedule was Jazz Attack. In 2026 there is none. ## ADJACENT INFRASTRUCTURE - **Smooth Jazz Cruise / Jazz Cruises LLC** (Michael Lazaroff), 8 Aug 2026, in his own words: *"Many, if not most, of the stars of jazz know us and we know them. Offers are sent out by us routinely and without a great deal of formality."* In smooth jazz the buyer goes direct and the agency layer is bypassed entirely. - **Berks Arts Council ceased operations 27 July 2026** after 55 years. Berks Jazz Fest survives as a thin entity under John Ernesto, who now personally carries the artist relationships. Berks' former ED Tish Davis was previously a stage manager at Rehoboth. - **Seabreeze** is owned by Carter Broadcasting Inc. — a radio company. - **Catalina JazzTrax** and the JazzTrax syndicated radio show are the same business (Art Good). ## CORRECTIONS TO COMMON ASSUMPTIONS - Bennett Morgan & Associates is **defunct** (retired 2009, died 2017). - "Absolute Artists" and "Vision Artist Group" could not be found to exist. - APA no longer exists standalone — merged into Independent Artist Group, June 2023. - Booking Entertainment, AAE Music, De La Font, Celebrity Talent International and MN2S are buyer-side lead-generation brokers **in their own written disclaimers** — they represent nobody on this list. - Wasserman Music renamed to THE·TEAM in March 2026.