[Dixielandjazz] High Ticket Prices for Jazz? - Was Polcer/Gordon/Cocuzzi conceret.

[Stephen G Barbone]

IMO, $35 is not a lot of money to most people in the USA today. We pay  
more than that for Cable TV per month, Twice as much to see a football  
or hockey game, more than that to fill up our cars with gasoline, more  
than that for a good dinner and a drink or two etc.

It is a shame that $35 is more than we are willing to pay to hear  
excellent jazz musicians perform. Especially since, as Bob Ringwald  
said, some attendees said it was the best concert they ever heard.

Funny how we have differing views on what is, and what is not, worth  
$35.

I recently took wife Martha to see Marty Grosz, Scott Robinson, Dan  
Block and Vince Giordano perform at a Tri State Jazz Society Concert  
in the Philadelphia area. It cost us $30, and was not a fund raiser  
like the Sacto Concert. Plus dinner at a local restaurant $70, plus  
about $21 worth of gas. To me, the $121 we spent was a bargain.

It was the best (IMO) jazz concert I have heard in several years.  
That's why I went. Yet a friend of mine who claims Marty Grosz is his  
favorite living jazz musician felt that he didn't get his money's  
worth, because Marty's program included a bit of chatter between each  
number. It should have been MORE MUSIC, said my friend. They only  
played about 20 tunes he added.  I could only stand there mute and  
think about how much inferior music there is out there. Those inferior  
bands may play 30 tunes instead of 20, but it's the quality of the  
music that interests me, not the quantity.

Well, OK, that's what makes horse racing. But IMO $35 to hear Ed  
Polcer, Wycliff Gordon, Richard Simon, Joe Ascione, Houston Person and  
John Cocuzzi in live concert, is one of the biggest bargains around.  
Lordy, these guys are jazz giants, not your run of the mill garage  
band. That it was a fund raiser for budding young jazz musicians makes  
it even more of as bargain.

If we are not willing to pay a few bucks more for excellence, we  
deserve mediocrity. I only hope we know the difference.

Cheers,
Steve Barbone