Vocalist Eugenie Jones, who lit up the Jazz and Oysters festival the last couple of years, is excited about returning to perform on the Long Beach Peninsula.

She will bring her instrumental quartet to perform a pre-Christmas matinee concert Sunday at the Eagle’s Nest resort in Ilwaco.

“My band and I are so thrilled to return for another performance,” Jones said. “The coast audiences are always so kind and engaged — they make performing a joy.”

The event wraps up the 2019 season for the Water Music Society, whose annual three-day festival was held in October.

The afternoon begins with a social hour at 1:35 p.m., featuring sweet and savory appetizers and a no-host champagne and wine bar. The concert starts at 2:35 p.m. Because the group is celebrating is 35th anniversary this year, all events start at 35 minutes past the hour.

“Eugenie Jones delighted attendees at Jazz and Oysters the last two years,” Diane Marshall, who leads organizers, said. “She and her instrumentalists will present a soulful concert of holiday music to get the season off to a beautiful start.”

‘An intelligent, thoughtful composer’

Originally from West Virginia, Jones is based in Seattle. Her early musical influences came from her parents, who favored jazz and soul. Her father, a coal miner, directed her in their Baptist church choir and her mother sang lead soprano. Jones earned a master’s degree in business administration and had a career in marketing, but her mother’s death from colon cancer shifted her focus from leading her own Bremerton, Wash., area congregation to becoming a professional musician.

She told one interviewer: “I can only describe my beginnings in jazz as a time of missing my mom, missing hearing her voice singing around the house and wondering within myself if I could do that — if I could sing and carry on that part of her.”

She has released two albums, “Black Lace Blue Tears” in 2013 and “Come Out Swingin’” in 2015.

In a review, radio personality Curtis Davenport from Curt’s Jazz in Charlotte, N.C., noted that many of the recorded tracks are her own compositions. “This fact alone differentiates her as she is one of the very few African-American women singer-songwriters in jazz today,” Davenport wrote. “And . . . the lady can sing as well as she can write. She is an intelligent, thoughtful composer in the tradition of Abbey Lincoln and Nina Simone.”

Mark Holston of Jazziz Magazine has commended her keen sense of phrasing. “Like a veteran horn soloist, she slides effortlessly from one octave to the next, always landing on the right, pitch-perfect note,” Holston wrote. “A sly use of vibrato and reluctance to oversell the lyrics all add up to a vocal style that, while occasionally emotionally taut, is generally relaxed, flirtatious and easy to love.”

Trumpet trio

A significant portion of the proceeds from the Water Music Festival’s concerts is donated to the Ocean Beach and Naselle-Grays River school districts’ music programs in Pacific County. Students from both high schools will be among those serving food and cleaning up.

Since 2009, the festival has given time for local music students to perform. A trumpet trio featuring the talents of Ilwaco students Christopher Lake, John Johnson and Ewan Olson will add to the entertainment.

“It does not get much better than producing concerts with world-class musicians,” Marshall said, “and being able to support music education programs in the local schools.”

‘The coast audiences are always so kind and engaged — they make performing a joy.’ — Eugenie Jones 

Eugenie Jones and her instrumental quartet Christmas concert

2:25 p.m. Sunday

1:35 p.m. social hour with appetizers and drinks

Eagle’s Nest resort, 700 North Head Road, Ilwaco, Wash.

Tickets are $10 at watermusicfestival.com or at the door if seats remain.