Read Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4.
From: Dennis Owsley
Just a quick thought. How about getting Gene Dobbs Bradford and Cynthia Prost to comment on the threads of this discussion or try a second roundtable with the two of them and Steve and Terry? That ought to generate some sparks.
From: Steve Pick
Just for the record, and in case anybody was wondering, I have an incredibly high level of respect for what you do, Dennis. Not only have you kept jazz on the air in an accessible and intelligent manner, but dammit, you're the only local music programmer left on a radio station that used to be crawling with 'em. You're one of the best things going for this town.
And, a great photographer, too.
From: Dennis Owsley
The tragedy of it all is that jazz on the radio is usually done by the jazz-centric all over the country. I'm not trying to be defensive, but this music is dying in this country because there is no real exposure anywhere. The only way that we can resurrect it, I believe, is to start calling a spade a spade and quit equivocating around people who say they want to put on a jazz concert and then do what is happening in "jazz" festivals everywhere in this country, including St. Louis. I don't like to sound like the "Jazz Police" but somebody has got to draw a line in the sand somewhere and stick to it. Remember this, the media conglomerates in this world would sell snuff films if they thought they could get away with it; their advertising and control is that good. If they wanted to, they could sell jazz.
From: Dean Minderman
Lots of good stuff from this roundtable so far - so much so that I'm afraid it may prove impossible to respond to every point that deserves to be addressed. Please forgive me if I cherry pick and/or skip around a bit.(Edited immediately after posting to fix some formatting problems,then edited again to fix the headline.)
Dennis, I'd very much like to hear what Gene Dobbs Bradford and Cynthia Prost have to say about some of the things we're discussing, and if one or both of them posts a comment, I'd call readers' attention to it, respond, and try to get them to stick around and talk more.
It can be hard to jump into the middle of a discussion like this, though - which is why I like the idea of a presenters' panel. In fact, I'd already been musing about doing something along those lines as a follow-up to this roundtable, but ideally I'd like to include another presenter or two, just to get a bigger cross-section. Prime candidates would be those involved in programming the UMSL and Webster fests and/or representatives from the Sheldon and the Touhill. I'd like to hear their take on budget issues, audience development and marketing, and of course how they balance artistry and commerce when booking their respective venues and/or festivals.
As for drawing a line in the sand, I'm reminded of what I've heard about Bill Dixon and the October Revolution in 1964, which I understand was essentially staged as a counter-festival for NYC avant-garde musicians who were being ignored by the festival booking and media powers-that-were of that time. I'd love to see St. Louis musicians stage a counter-festival here; for one thing, it would make great copy!
If you're talking about media people drawing a line, well, I think that's what we're doing here, to an extent, though I'm certainly not fooling myself into thinking I have any real power. That said, I'd never tell anyone not to go to Shaw Park in June, but I certainly will try to inform them about and encourage them to support other events with greater musical substance and/or more local representation.
I'd heard most of the story about Cecil Taylor at the VP Fair that Terry recounted, but the detail about no one going to get him out of his hotel room is new to me, and, frankly, kind of blows my mind. Talk about your catastrophic failure of artist relations and production management! As someone who's worked on the presenter side, I can't imagine the mindset that would allow something like that to happen.
It does underscore the need for basic competence in event planning and production, though, and I'd agree with Terry that the US Bank fest does a good job with the mechanics of putting on a large event, i.e. everything from ticketing to lights, sound and staging to making sure there are enough security personnel and portable toilets. The problem lies in the programming, and, to a lesser extent, the marketing and promotion.
By the way, Terry, I'm flattered that you like some of my programming ideas, and hey, if any presenters want to hire me to produce or consult, I'm available, experienced and my rates are extremely reasonable. :)
Seriously though, one of Kevin Johnson's P-D stories last year indicated that the budget for the 2005 Shaw Park festival was in the neighborhood of $500,000. Assuming this year's budget is the same or slightly less, that's still a healthy sum for a two-day event. I don't know what percentage of that budget is actually spent hiring musicians, but St. Louis doesn't seem to be getting a lot of jazz for the buck this year.
(In hopes of getting more insight into the USBStLJ&HF's finances, I went to GuideStar and downloaded the Form 990 from 2004, the most recent available, for Cultural Festivals, the not-for-profit organization that produces the US Bank St. Louis Jazz and Heritage Festival and the St. Louis Art Fair. This is the form that all not-for-profits have to file with the Feds, and it has details on income, expenditures, and so on. I'm not an expert in decoding such things, so I may not be able to extract any useful information before this roundtable ends, but I promise to share what I do find out.)
Steve, I'm glad you mentioned Twangclips. That seems to be a fairly popular program, and one that adds a lot of fun and a certain ambience to the larger event without incurring a huge expense. That's exactly the sort of thing I'd hope to do with a night of jazz film, and with the other sorts of events we've imagined as part of a week-long festival. The whole notion of offering people a variety of, as you put it, social and intellectual experiences makes a lot of sense to me.
Dennis, I was very interested in your research into the St. Louis media's maltreatment of ragtime and jazz, and though a bit dismayed to find out that it's been that way for a long time, I can't say I'm surprised. However, there are still people who want this sort of information, even when they can't get it in the daily paper or from commercial broadcasters. The Web provides us with new opportunities to cover art forms that get short shrift in the mass media, and a lot of the action in cultural coverage seems to be shifting online. (To the extent that this sounds self-serving from a guy who started a Web site to cover jazz, I plead guilty as charged.) And, referencing your statement about having to get 'em while they're young, kids and teens do use the Web a lot, and so perhaps it will turn out to be a good place for them to connect with jazz.
I lament the loss of concert reviews along with the rest of you. In fact, I was just bending Terry's ear about this last week, recounting a rather long and convoluted story about how the Post stopped reviewing New Music Circle concerts. I'd love to run some reviews of live shows on this site, but let's face it, a review seen by a few hundred readers on a Web site just isn't the same as one published in a daily newspaper with hundreds of thousands of readers.
Rene, I hope you're not too discouraged to stay in the discussion, because I totally disagree that you have nothing new to say. The Matthew Shipp business is interesting - he's been written up in all the jazz mags and has also received some mainstream attention in the New York Times, Rolling Stone and so on, so for a college professor who teaches jazz not to have heard of him seems extraordinary to me. But he's far from the only musician with a reasonably well-known name who can't get a gig here. I know that Greg Osby and Marty Ehrlich - two hometown boys! - have been frustrated trying to get booked in St. Louis. Also, years ago I personally witnessed New Music Circle turn down two proposals - one from the Sam Rivers Trio and one from Leroy Jenkins, Myra Melford and Joseph Jarman - that were well within the organization's financial means because the music director didn't want to book what he deemed as jazz acts. (This after booking Jenkins as a solo a couple years earlier…go figure.)
To an extent, Rene's notion of a bunch of smaller festivals is kind of what we already have - Shaw Park focuses on bigger-name acts, Webster does local bands and musicians, the UMSL fest gets at least one well-known guest and a bunch of pros who are good at doing the clinic and workshop thing, and so on. And yet, this state of affairs doesn't seem to satisfy, so I'm just going to go ahead and pretend that the idea of several smaller fests is not that different from the idea of a single fest comprised of a bunch of different events in various venues around town, so that I can make another point about another advantage of such an arrangement.
Which is this: A two-day event gives you a very limited shot at media exposure and publicity, whereas a weeklong fest can be scheduled in a way that maximize media coverage. Imagine, if you will, a weeklong jazz festival that starts with a free outdoor concert held on a Sunday in Forest Park, Tower Grove or a similar location. Any competent publicist should be able to get that event on all three local TV evening news broadcasts on what is usually the slowest news day of the week; get some coverage in Monday's Post; and follow it up with some radio appearances during the day on Monday.
That give you a fighting chance to get people to the events you're doing during the week, each of which (film festival, jazz cruise, pub crawl, musicians' visits to schools, etc) could generate additional coverage, all of which drives people to your big ticketed shows, indoor or outdoor, held the following Friday and Saturday.
I know, easier said than done, but it's not brain science or rocket surgery. If I can figure it out, why can't someone who's in a position to do something about it?
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