Post article says 2007 jazz fest will be "scaled back"

There's news this weekend about the 2007 edition of the US Bank St. Louis Jazz and Heritage Festival, and it's not good. From the "Arts Briefs" section of the Sunday Post-Dispatch comes this item written by pop critic Kevin Johnson, reproduced here in its entirety:

"Don't expect that bigger is better will apply when the U.S. Bank St. Louis Jazz and Heritage Festival returns this summer. Organizer Cynthia Prost says the event will be scaled back and begin earlier: on June 2 at Shaw Park in Clayton.

Prost says organizers decided to begin the festival on a Saturday this year for the first time because it's been a challenge to bring people through the gates on a Friday evening.

Last year, about 16,000 people attended the festival June 23-24. It featured David Sanborn, Lizz Wright, George Duke and Stanley Clarke, Dr. John and the Preservation Hall Jazz Band.

A full schedule of acts for this summer is expected later this month. (KCJ)"

Setting aside the date change, which doesn't seem to be a particularly big deal, this short item raises almost as many questions as it answers. While it's explicitly stated that the 2007 festival will be "scaled back" and will begin on a Saturday rather than Friday, what's not clear is if the event will be one day (Saturday only) or two (Saturday and Sunday), or what else this downsizing might entail - specifically, reducing the number of acts, the number of stages, or both.

Moreover, the bigger question is that, given that the 2006 festival was the best attended in five years, why cut back now? Are sponsors pulling out or failing to renew their agreements; costs rising out of proportion to revenues; or what? These questions would seem to be worth looking into, and so that's what I plan to do in the coming week. Stay tuned.

(Edited after posting to add a link back to the original item.)