The StLJN Jazz Roundtable: Jazz festivals, part 1

This post is the first in an online discussion about jazz festivals, featuring contibutions from Dennis Owsley, Steve Pick, Terry Perkins, Rene Saller and StLJN editor Dean Minderman. Please feel free to use the comments section to ask questions or to add your thoughts and opinions. (For more about the panel, go here.)

From: Dean Minderman

Good morning to you all, and thanks once again for being part of StLJN's first Jazz Roundtable.

So - let's talk about jazz festivals. The St. Louis area has a number of events that qualify in one sense or another, most prominently the US Bank St. Louis Jazz and Heritage Festival, which announced its 2006 lineup last week.

The Shaw Park event isn't the only one this year with well-known talent, though. Clark Terry will perform at the TouPAC in April as one of several guest artists taking part in the Greater St. Louis Jazz Festival, which is based at UMSL but will also expand to Jazz at the Bistro this year.

I also hear that the Old Webster Jazz Festival, which features a day of music from St. Louis-based performers on two stages, will happen again this year in September in my (and Rene's) childhood hometown, suburban Webster Groves. In addition to these three, there are other smaller events held around the region throughout the year, like the one in Belleville last week that featured an appearance by saxophonist Jeff Coffin.

Is it important for St. Louis to have a jazz festival, or festivals - major, minor or otherwise? If so, why? What makes for a good jazz festival? What do you think of our current local jazz festival offerings? And, if you had your way, what sort of programming would you like to see those festivals do?

Let me get started by answering the question: Do jazz festivals matter? After all, New York and Chicago both have some nice festivals, but the reputations of both cities as good places to play and hear jazz are built on what happens there all year around in clubs, concert halls and recording studios. Conversely, the hometowns of some of the most storied jazz festivals, from Newport to Montreaux, are not otherwise particularly known as hotbeds of jazz activity.

But I think for a city like St. Louis, a jazz festival can play an important role in the overall health of the local scene. Ideally, a festival can provide fans with a chance to hear and enjoy musicians and programs they might not otherwise get to experience. It gives new listeners (and potential fans) a special occasion to serve as an easy entry point into the music. Festival programmers can use the opportunity to try new things, and smart programming can show audiences new ways to experience and think about the music and the artists who make it.

A successful festival can get different people and organizations within a community pooling resources and working together, achieving more together than they could individually. It provides a focal point for attention from media that don't usually cover jazz. For local musicians, it's a paying gig, a chance to showcase your best work, and a way to reach a lot more people than that gig at a club that only seats 125 people. And a big festival can even have a noticeable economic and tourism impact on a city, though I think right now we're a long way from that happening in St. Louis.
All in all, those seem to me like plenty of reasons to want a major jazz festival to grow in St. Louis. But, as noted above, there are many other related questions to consider, too, and I've already said plenty. So, what do you think?

From: Dennis Owsley

I think that a festival organizer must determine what the goal of a (for example, jazz) festival is. Your goals will determine what kind of a festival you will present. Is the goal to draw a lot of people? Is the goal to present great music? Is the goal to draw an ethnically diverse crowd? Is the goal to draw an age diverse crowd? Is the goal to present local talent? I think that all too often, the goal to present great music is secondary to the other four goals stated above. I will go for the great music every time, so I usually do not attend large festivals that have to present acts that are popular but marginally related to jazz to draw large, ethnically and age diverse crowds. When I go to a festival, it is one with great musicians who can really play. Lately, I've gone to the Vail Jazz Party (attendance ~600 with over 40 hours or music over Labor Day) or the Dick Gibson Jazz Parties (similar, but even more music).

Reggie Thomas and I were talking the other day and it seems to us that in order for someone to become a jazz fan, he or she must have some sort of epiphany at an early age, either through a hip teacher or by experiencing a live performance by a great musician, etc. Will these large festivals attract more people to jazz? Probably not, unless people in the the audience are under the age of 18 and they are not just hanging out with their friends. But people under the age of 18 don't have a lot of money to spend. The target audience these days is the 19-34 demographic, who seem to have more money to spend on music, etc. Advertisers seem to want to keep these people in a state of perpetual adolescence, so most of the current people in this demographic may be already lost to jazz forever. So, I believe, if you want to gain more fans for future jazz festivals, you must put your emphasis on a younger crowd by possibly making your festival more of a family atmosphere. But, this will take time (maybe 10 years).

We try to get out of St. Louis as soon as we can in the summer for comfort reasons, but I have been to two of the Shaw Park festivals. One thing that said volumes to me was that by the 2004 festival, local performers were shunted away from the main stage. Does the Shaw Park festival have a goal of showcasing local jazz talent? Here are the numbers of local groups presented: 2001 (3 local groups); 2002 (6 local groups); 2003 and 2004 (4 local groups); 2005 (2 local groups) and 2006 (1 local artist announced). You decide.I think that many people still believe that a high percentage of African Americans still support jazz. I don't think this is true anymore. I don't have any data to support this, but I think that blacks have been turning away from jazz since the "new thing" days of the 1960's. I also think that the percentage of blacks supporting the music among the younger crowd is probably close to the same percentage that supports jazz in other ethnic groups in this country. The percentage that supports jazz is much higher in other countries. So what does this say about our popular culture (if you can call it culture)?

I have no problems with having a festival that has diverse music that will draw a lot of people (like the New Orleans Fest), but that Festival is no longer called a jazz festival. Those things are good for the economy.

From: Steve Pick

As I see it, there are different forms of festivals. The St. Louis models we are most familiar with would be the Fair St. Louis/VP Fair, and the variously named Blues Fests such as Big Muddy. These are public, outdoor events that are free to attend.

In my memory, St. Louis hasn't had many free jazz festivals. The 1989 VP Fair remains my all-time favorite event, because there you had Lester Bowie's Brass Fantasy, the World Saxophone Quartet, and the expected arrival, at least, of Cecil Taylor. The Shaw Park festival isn't free, so it feels like a different sort of event. Obviously, there are a lot of people willing to pay the bucks to hear the music out in that lovely surroundings, but because the festival has to chase this audience, booking tends to be more conservative than I would like to hear.

The Greater St. Louis Jazz Festival seems to be a completely different model, spreading the music out across different venues for different prices on different nights, much like the old school Kool Jazz Fests in NYC.

I think any festival which charges money is going to be limited as to the good it can do for jazz in town. All those benefits Dean cites, which are very real, are held down by the fact that the audience has to make the conscious decision to part with some dollars. That means you need something special to lure people in.

I've only gone to the Clayton festival once, to see Dave Holland's Big Band. It was kind of weird. It seemed as though there was a disconnect between the music and the audience. The music was excellent, but I didn't feel it in the ways I expected to, and I think the problem had to do with the set-up, not the performance. I can't put my finger on it, but it wasn't right. I contrast that with the magnificent memory of Lester Bowie's Brass Fantasy blaring away as the fireworks shot off overhead back in 89. Jazz can work outdoors, but something about the Clayton festival left me cold.

Where am I going with this? Do I think St. Louis should have a jazz festival? Well, we've contributed more than our share to jazz history, so it makes sense. We don't exactly have a huge audience here in town, but I would bet it's larger than in a lot of cities.

But, I would really love to see a festival with a stronger aesthetic than any of the ones we've had so far. What is jazz in 2006? There's a lot of great music being made, but we don't always get live looks at the most exciting performers. Again, I go back to the 1989 VP Fair as a model. Put together a festival with a few old time masters and some of the hottest, most inventive players of the present. Have it be something we can point to proudly, something that would entice people to travel from out of town because they wouldn't be able to see such a collection of talent in one place otherwise.

That's enough for now. You guys talk some.

(Edited immediately after posting to fix a typo in the introduction.)