Jun 13, 2013

Come and Get Your Steaming Pile Of Jazz Fest

Long past due for my yearly diatribe on the local excuse for a festival that is supposed to be about  furthering an appreciation of jazz music through presentation, promotion and outreach.

I won't go whole hog this year because, quite bluntly, all of the same problems are still there and much has gotten worse. I don't think it has been this bad since a failed punk rock bass player ran the thing.

If you wish to read past thoughts.
2011 Jazz Fest
2011 Jazz Fest Post Mortem
2012 Jazz Fest
2012 Jazz Fest Post Mortem

Over all I believe that a publicly funded non profit arts group with a mandate to promote jazz should do just that. It should also live up to it's name International Jazz. Only 7 'over a 100 ' acts are international jazz

Even if all they booked was: jazz, latin, blues and music mistaken for jazz, and as long as the majority was jazz, then we jazz fans would be happy (or at least have no legitimate reason not to be)

but...
  1.  it is still less than a third is jazz (31/100) and less than half jazz  appropriate (42/100) so your 58-69 acts are mostly made up of popular types of music. You know the kind that is on the radio, played in clubs all the time. Stuff you can see and hear 365 days of the year.
  2.  still have samey bookings that conflict with each other 
  3. still blatant favoritism to a handful of locals 
  4. still having that same handful of people rearranged to make 'new' groups
  5. still run by a bean counter and a DJ
  6. still using posters to advertise 
  7. still padding the bio's to decive you into beliving you are getting a jazz act
  8. still trying to make it seem like a year round full time job with non jazz concerts through the year
  9. still having most nights with little or no jazz (2 with 0, 1 with 1, 1 with 2, 2 with 3)
  10. still relying on beer sales on the opening weekend with 4 out 22 acts jazz 11 out of 22 jazz fest appropriate. 
  11. still zero jazz on the opening Saturday (you know the biggest day and night of the weekend).
  12. still too long at 11 days and is one day longer than Montreal's (who has 10 Stages, 150 concerts, 300 free concerts and 3.000 artists)
  13. still having acts play for free on one day expecting you to pay on another day
  14. still giving the pop acts multiple bookings
  15. still having locals opening for major stars forcing us to pay real money to see someone we can see for free year round. (headliner wants to do a short set? charge less)
  16. still having locals you can see year round for free playing in clubs for a fee
  17. still giving gigs to people or groups who have had as few ZERO gigs in the past year
  18. still promoting the 'sure fire' money grubbing non jazz more than the 'supposedly' struggling jazz
  19. still losing money
  20. still an artistic failure
  21. still leaving many local veterans out of the festival
To add to the 'not the sharpest knife in the drawer' organizing dept...4/5 of this years TD jazz labs are freaking blues players!!

I also waited a long time to write this. In year's gone by I started the conversation early (at the time of their 'big' schedule announcement) but with all the encouragement coming in private I thought I'd wait till the day of the fest opening. I also wanted a picture of who was in the area (playing other jazz festivals)

Some Notes

Well if you know your jazz you don't need me to show you but...

GEORGE BENSON. Great guitarist and singer. But before you hope this tour is in support of his Nat "King" Cole tribute album. Check again he is doing his 'sex funk'. But to me this is on the list of things that get mistaken for jazz so you decide if you want to see the former prodigy who was to have the jazz guitarist torch passed to him after Wes Montgomery who, instead, sold  his soul.

BTW this is supposed to be their big jazz name AND commercial money maker so good luck with that.

RUDRESH MAHANTHAPPA
Saxophone. If Micro tonal jazz is your thing. The Guitarist plays fretless so kinda interesting. But I can think of more accessible artists with great artistic cred. This seems like a bad booking, particularly main stage and on a Monday

PATRICIA BARBER
Singer Pianist. Real deal

PRESERVATION HALL JAZZ BAND
If trad is your bag (but weren't they just here?)

JANE MONHEIT
Singer. Don't know what your getting with her serious jazz cred but has started to 'genre cross' and we know what  that means...downward pressure to do pop and sell more units

COURTNEY PINE
Saxophone. If you only go to one show this might be the one

Glenn Miller Orchestra...
Just kidding, this is on the 25th of June and not part of the festival but since they have nothing the week before they could have been. Ironic that it has no place in our Jazz Fest but DJnotalent does

Because the international jazz bookings are so thin, even my "I don't care what else they have at the festival as long as I can see some great international jazz" people are complaining for the second year in a row.

Too little and, with the exception on Rudresh and to a much lesser extent Pine, too samey and too safe.
Little variety with 3 singers one who plays guitar, one piano and 2 sax players.

On that note here is my list of touring jazz acts in Canada this June.
How many rock bands, DJs and hip hoppers would you trade to have one or more of these acts?
Heck I'd trade em all for Kurt Rosenwinkle.

Barry Harris (actually played with Charlie Parker)
Bill Charlap
Bill Frissel
Bob James
Charles Lloyd
Charlie Hunter
Christine and Ingrid Jensen (yes they have been here recently)
David Sanborn
Elaine Elias
Emily Clare Barlow
Esperanza Spalding
Houston Person
Jacky Terrasson
Jazz at the Lincoln Center (ya I know, they over did it, had them too much, took a bath last time but they are on the list)
John Abercrombie (I don’t think he has ever been here)
John McLaughlin
John Scofield (I don’t mind as it is his Uber-Jam Band)
Joshua Redman
Kurt Rosenwinkle (come on, one of the best ‘new’ guitarists in a long time)
Larry Goldings
Lionel Loueke
Michael Kaeshammer
Peggy Lee
Quincy Jones
Ravi Coltrane

Now in case "they" are actually reading this or the karmic spirits are at work...here is my rough draft of a fest sched using the jazz acts slated for this year. The headliners (with one addition) as pay for events, all locals on the market square stage for free and touring Big City Canadians in the clubs
No pop, rock, folk, country, hip hop or DJ's no need to plum "Austin City Limits" for your outsider indie band.

Pardon the layout as it doesn't seem to work on this blog
_________________________________________________________________________________


Theater Series
Mon June 17 Tues June 18 Wed June 19 Thurs June 20 Fri June 21 Sat June 22 Sun June 23
RUDRESH
MAHAN-THAPPA'S
GAMAK
WEST END CULTURAL CENTRE • 8 PM
PATRICIA BARBER
QUARTET
WEST END CULTURAL CENTRE • 8 PM

I Can Dream     KURT ROSEN-WINKLE
BURTON CUMMINGS THEATRE • 8 PM
PRESER-
VATION
HALL
JAZZ BAND

BURTON CUMMINGS THEATRE • 8 PM
JANE MONHEIT
BURTON CUMMINGS THEATRE • 9 PM

COURTNEY PINE
CENTENNIAL CONCERT
 HALL • 9PM
GEORGE BENSON
BURTON CUMMINGS THEATRE • 9PM
Touring  Canadian Acts Club Series
JENNIFER
HANSON
GYPSOPHILIA CURTIS MACDONALD
Imaginary Free Out Door Series with all Local  Talent
JODIE BORLÉ
JOANNA MAJOKO
SIMON CHRISTIE QUINTET
THE KEITH
 PRICE DOUBLE QUARTET

PAUL DE GURSE
QUARTET
TRIO BEMBE
MARCO CASTILLO
THE KNAPPEN STREET ALL-STAR BAND
EPP, PRICE & PRESSLAFF
COMBO LATINO
PAPA MAMBO  Walle Larson
ERIN PROPP
CURTIS
NOWOSAD
QUINTET
REGGIE SAN MIGUEL
AARON SHORR
AL SIMMONS DANIEL KOULACK,
GREG LOWE
RON PALEY
THE LUCAS
SADER PROJECT
ROSEMARIE TODASCHUK
JANICE FINLAY
BIG JAY HARRISON
QUINCY
 DAVIS &
U OF M'S PROMISE
DEVON GILLINGHAM
KARL KOHUT
MARTHA BROOKS QUARTET
MIRA

?










  • Everyone keeps their jazz gig
  • jazz every night
  • Latin jazz on some nights (with room for more)
  • 7 days long (In a perfect world I would start it on a Friday (not Thursday Night?) and end on the following Saturday...making it 8 days)
  • no fake opening weekend with lots of beer tent and little jazz content. Though an Opening weekend with jazz, tent or not, would be nice
It is just spit balling, I know there are flaws in the plan. I didn't go to the trouble of properly matching groups, or editing out multiple groups with virtually the same members, or people who have 0-2 gigs under their belt and I didn't add in any of the glaring omissions in respect to local players (which Jazz for lunch spots and/or the empty Sunday could be filled with).

I left out blues acts. I believe blues has a place at jazz festivals but they now have their own festival.

You could even time it so the free shows didn't conflict with the pay shows.
As a bonus, the pay concerts biggest customers could and should be the local jazz musicians.

Have the free shows weekday nights 5-7:30 with time to walk to the 8 pm concert

On Friday they could stop at 8:30 in time to walk to the 9pm concerts and on weekends the shows could run all afternoon and stop at 8:30.

Less acts cost less money so maybe it can stop losing money (or at least be an artistic success while in the red)
Jazz fans get their fill and the complaining stops. You could still put in the odd, blues soul, "real" R&B funk with horns act without screwing up the festival.

So there ya have it. Feel free to pass it along and send your complaints to the right people. Telling me or talking among your selves does little good.

Now either to calm you down or bloat my YouTube views, I give you something you will probably never see at our jazz fest and can see for free all year  here is me playing 'Darn That Dream' solo 7 string guitar.

3 comments:

  1. Well Rob, I wish I could disagree with all that you've written... but I can't. I think this is the thinnest festival to date, and that's a pretty sad comment. Thankfully I'll be able to get a real jazz festival fix when I'm in Toronto at the end of this month.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Heh. Always love your jazz fest rants. I couldn't agree more. Well, except for Patricia Barber. I was all jazzed to go hear her until I listened to her latest CD. It isn't really jazz, to my ears anyways. Oh, and Curtis McDonald you didn't mention, but might be worth hearing. I'll prolly go to Guelph again this year. Last year I heard Myra Melford/Jenny Scheinman, Darius Jones/Matthew Shipp, Reggie Workman/Gerry Hemmingway, Nils Petter Molvaer, Fred Frith, Hamid Drake/Larry Ochs, and Peter Brotzmann -- all in one day! It's a shame I have to go so far, that is like $1000 out of the Manitoba economy, but I'm not getting much jazz here.

    ReplyDelete
  3. They don't think of that. Jazz fans have more disposable income and can get their fix elsewhere and benefit a different festival and economic location.

    I did mention Curtis I put him my imaginary sched as a club act.

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