Read Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, and Part 5.
From: Terry Perkins
Sorry I missed out on some of last night's discussion. I was at Jazz at the Bistro to see Ahmad Jamal -- and his most excellent drummer, Idris Muhammed.
Getting back to the subjects that Rene brought up -- the sheer variety of musical styles that get lumped under the label of jazz...and the fact that it is tough to find venues for talented musicians like Matthew Shipp -- it seems that a lot of venues seem to put their own limits on them selves when they book a lineup -- especially for a series. But "It Doesn't Have to Be that Way" (referencing an old Steve Forbert tune, which has absolutely nothing to do with jazz). If you can build a solid audience for a series, it then allows you to take more chances since you have a subscrber base to count on (as long as you don't go completely off track).
With an established base now in place, It's nice to see Jazz at the Bistro starting to take more chances with WSQ (which paid off at the box office) and Don Byron (coming up in April). The Bistro's next season should be very interesting.,, and I'm betting even more eclectic.
And now that the Bistro is operating under the wider umbrella of the Jazz St. Louis non-profit -- with a mission to present music in other venues as well -- they seem like the ideal organization to serve as a central cog in a broader-based, longer time period St. Louis Jazz Festival that both Dean and I see as a possibility.
Of course, the key is cooperation... and that's a tough thing to pull off when you get more than two organizations involved -- especially ones that compete against each other for audiences at certain levels. But check out the recent schedules for the Montreal and San Francisco Fests (wish I had the links in front of me, but it's too early and I have to stop to get a couple articles in this morning) and you'll see many different venues involved -- and a lot of different organizations as well -- working under an umbrella group... and with strong civic and corporate support.
Back to my deadlines...
From: Dean Minderman
Terry, I think your point about jazz series and festival programmers limiting themselves by taking too few chances is spot on.
I can understand a for-profit theater or club deciding who to book mainly on the basis of potential financial returns. But if you're a not-for-profit organization that takes grant money from the likes of the Regional Arts Commission and Missouri Arts Council, and part of your mission is to preserve and promote a specific art form like jazz, I think a certain amount of measured risk-taking ought to be mandatory.
It's great that the WSQ did good business during their recent run at Jazz at the Bistro, and I hope that it means we'll see more acts outside the hard-bop/Latin Jazz/Great American Songbook genres that have been the mainstays there. Not that there's anything wrong with that (to quote Jerry Seinfeld) but variety is, as they say, the spice of life.
I know that Jazz St. Louis has also announced plans for an avant-garde series, which Gene Dobbs Bradford says will likely be staged at venues other than the Bistro, and I look forward to seeing who will be booked for that.
As for Jazz St. Louis being the sort of "hub" that could organize a multi-day, multi-venue festival like we've been discussing, the potential is certainly there now that the organization has officially expanded its mission. However, I think they'd need more funding and a bigger staff to take on that sort of task, as they've got a fair amount on their plate already.
Getting a number of different organizations to cooperate on such a festival would take work, but it can be done if organizers are serious about developing real partnerships. When I was producing the New Music Circle concert series, we were able to develop relationships with the St. Louis Art Museum, the Forum for Contemporary Art (now the Contemporary Art Museum), the St. Louis Film Festival, Washington University, Webster University, and several for-profit art galleries, among others. If all those groups were willing to work with a small organization like NMC, one would think they and others would also be willing to get on board for a larger, better-funded event if approached in the right way.
Looks like our roundtable is winding down, so this may be the last entry unless someone else weighs in before the end of the day.
So let me take this opportunity to thank all the participants - Terry Perkins, Dennis Owsley, Steve Pick and Rene Spencer Saller - for spending some of their valuable time on this discussion. I don't know that we've solved any real-world problems here, but at least we've gotten a number of ideas and viewpoints into the public sphere for others to consider. And there are some things that have come out of this discussion that suggest possible future stories here at StLJN as well, so I'll be following up on those.
Terry, Dennis, Steve and Rene - I've enjoyed having you all here, and I hope you guys have had fun, too. If I can come up with some more topic ideas, maybe we can do it again sometime.
(Edited right after posting to correct one sentence that was gibberish.)
No comments:
Post a Comment