[Dixielandjazz] The Montreal Jazz Festival - World's Largest?

[Jerry Brown]

Hi All,

Have to put my piece in here. Maybe The Montreal event
ought to be described as the the 'Largest Festival in
the World which calls itself a Jazz Festival" because
at having looked through the full list of performers
the actual jazz content (of any style) would appear to
be well under 50%. Folk music, out-and-out pop;
musical theatre and what seems to be popularly known
as 'world music' (as opposed to what? Inter-galatic
music!) seems to predominate. 

A further example of the bastardisation of the word
'jazz'!

Interesting that one of the  most expensive of the
ticketed events (the majority are free which is the
easiest way to attract big crowds after all) is the
concert by a third-rate clarinet player who if he had
to rely on his musical skill rather than his fame in
other areas would find it difficult to attract an
audience of 25 to a pub bar on a wet Sunday afternoon.

Cheers,

Jerry
Norwich,
U.K.

--- Stephen G Barbone <barbonestreet at earthlink.net>
wrote:

> With a 25 million dollar operating budget, and one
> million attendees,  
> The Montreal Jazz Festival claims to be the largest
> in the world. Not  
> too much trad is there, but note that Woody Allen's
> Band is featured  
> among the 500 musical acts. While not specifically
> OKOM, this is an  
> interesting article about a jazz festival that
> succeeds wildly.
> Cheers,
> Steve Barbone
> 
> www.barbonestreet.com
> www.myspace.com/barbonestreetjazzband
> 
> June 28, 2008 - NY TIMES - by Ben Sisario
> Montreal’s Poet Son Heralds Its Festival
> 
> MONTREAL — On Wednesday night, in the last of his
> three concerts  
> presented as preludes to the Montreal International
> Jazz Festival,  
> Leonard Cohen, the 73-year-old hometown poet-hero on
> tour for the  
> first time in 15 years, said that on his last time
> through town he was  
> “60 years old, just a kid with a crazy dream.”
> Between waves of  
> applause and hollers in French and English, he
> added, “I am so  
> grateful to be here and to be from here.”
> 
> Mr. Cohen’s math notwithstanding, hometown pride and
> musical reverence  
> are at the center of the festival, which opened its
> 29th season on  
> Thursday and runs through July 6. Billing itself as
> the largest jazz  
> festival in the world, it attracts one million
> visitors a year to more  
> than 500 concerts in a three-block music zone
> downtown and brings  
> about $100 million in revenue to the city, according
> to Canadian  
> government estimates.
> 
> With CD sales in a chronic slump, the music industry
> has been turning  
> increasingly to live events for income, and in
> recent years big  
> smorgasbord festivals have sprouted up all over
> North America, aiming  
> to present all kinds of music for all kinds of
> people. But with a  
> setting ideal for tourists as well as for local
> residents, and a solid  
> history of eclectic programming — among the
> attractions this year are  
> Woody Allen, Al Green, Aretha Franklin, Public Enemy
> and the local  
> debut of Steely Dan — Montreal has held on to a rare
> prestige.
> 
> “There is no parallel in North America and perhaps
> no parallel around  
> the world,” said Scott Southard, a jazz and
> world-music booking agent  
> who has 15 artists at the festival. “In Europe or
> Bonnaroo, for  
> instance, they have to erect an entire village in a
> remote location.  
> Here you have an urban environment without having to
> reconstruct the  
> venue infrastructure every year.”
> 
> Begun in 1980 by two concert promoters, Alain Simard
> and André Ménard,  
> as a way to fill up what was then a dry summer
> concert calendar, the  
> festival takes over four concert halls of the Place
> des Arts  
> performing arts complex as well as numerous theaters
> and clubs around  
> the perimeter. Several blocks of downtown streets
> are closed for  
> outdoor stages, retail and food booths and
> children’s activities.  
> Despite the size, Mr. Simard, the president of the
> festival’s parent  
> company, L’Équipe Spectra, said that “the goal is
> not to be the  
> biggest jazz festival in the world, it’s to be the
> best.”
> 
> But as the festival approaches its 30th season, it
> is preparing to  
> grow even bigger, with help from a four-year, $120
> million government  
> plan to develop the area around Place des Arts. The
> first phase, to be  
> completed by next summer, includes a
> 75,000-square-foot park and  
> performance ground, the Place du Quartier des
> Spectacles. The festival  
> has also been given a 30-year lease and a $10
> million grant from the  
> Province of Quebec to renovate a nearby vacant
> building; when  
> completed it will add one club for use year-round.
> 
> As a tourist draw second only to Grand Prix du
> Canada, the Formula One  
> race held in Montreal in early June, the jazz
> festival has become an  
> important symbol of Montreal’s cosmopolitan
> lifestyle, said Charles  
> Lapointe, the chief executive of Tourism Montreal, a
> nonprofit agency  
> financed through a hotel tax.
> 
> “The jazz festival exemplifies perfectly what we are
> presenting on the  
> foreign market,” Mr. Lapointe said. “You can
> celebrate on the streets  
> without any problems with security and express all
> the pleasure you  
> want.”
> 
> Civic pride and creative abundance was clear on
> Thursday, the official  
> opening. (Mr. Cohen’s touring schedule prevented him
> from being part  
> of the festival proper; he appears at the enormous
> Glastonbury pop  
> festival in Britain on Sunday.)
> 
> During the afternoon crowds gradually filled up the
> Place des Arts  
> campus, slurping on ice cream cones beside the
> fountain and listening  
> to the sound check for a tribute to Mr. Cohen
> featuring Chris Botti,  
> Madeleine Peyroux, Buffy Sainte-Marie and others.
> Darting between  
> indoor evening concerts by the veteran jazz singer
> Dee Dee  
> Bridgewater, the young British songwriter Katie
> Melua and the African  
> performers Vieux Farka Touré and Salif Keita, a
> visitor could quickly  
> take in half a dozen outdoor concerts, parades and
> magicians. Two- 
> thirds of the concerts are free.
> 
> The Cohen tribute drew an estimated audience of
> 100,000, filling the  
> plaza and nearby streets. But the concerts by Mr.
> Cohen himself were  
> the clear early highlight. Dressed like a spy in a
> crisp black suit  
> and fedora, Mr. Cohen, who has said that after years
> in a Zen Buddhist  
> retreat in California, his lifelong depression has
> finally begun to  
> lift, sang a sleek and emotional set of nearly three
> hours. In “Bird  
> on the Wire,” “Hallelujah” and “Tower of Song” he
> sang of being  
> weighted down by cynicism and starving for
> affection, but between  
> songs he doffed his hat and smiled broadly for
> sustained ovations.
> 
> The festival, a nonprofit enterprise run by the
> for-profit company  
> L’Équipe Spectra, has an operating budget of $25
> million. And though  
> about 18 percent of that comes from national,
> provincial and city  
> sources, the biggest form of government support is
> the closing of  
> several blocks of busy city streets. The bulk of the
> budget comes from  
> corporate sponsorships (40 percent) and sales of
> tickets and  
> memorabilia (39 percent).
> 
> The prominence of sponsorships gives the festival a
> sense of  
> hyperbranding. Looking over Place des Arts, it is
> almost impossible  
> not to see a giant symbol of General Motors, the
> lead sponsor: besides  
> GM logos on banners and fliers throughout the
> grounds, the company  
> also has five displays of new cars for contests, and
> at least one of  
> the many marching bands wended its way around,
> wearing black GM T- 
> shirts.
> 
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