[Dixielandjazz] Where is jazz going?

[Stephen G Barbone]

George Wein is re-inventing his jazz festival approach around the  
world. Hopefully there will be some OKOM at them.

Cheers,
Steve Barbone
http://www.myspace.com/barbonestreetjazzband

February 25, 2010 - NY TIMES - by Ben Ratliff
Old Hand Tries New Approach to Jazz Festival



The concert promoter George Wein, now 84, has been getting out to  
clubs lately.

“More than 20 times in the past year,” he said in an interview on  
Tuesday. In Brooklyn, which he reckons he hasn’t visited more than two  
dozen times since 1960, he’s been to Zebulon and Barbès and the tiny  
Puppets. He’s been spending time at the Jazz Gallery, on Hudson Street  
in the South Village. And there he was last month during the crammed,  
chaotic Winter Jazzfest, settled in for a long night at Kenny’s  
Castaways on Bleecker Street.

“I’ve got to change my way of listening,” he said. “I’ve got to listen  
to what the musicians are trying to tell me and whether they’re doing  
it well.”

Some of what he has heard will be found in the first CareFusion Jazz  
Festival, a major jazz festival in New York this summer, produced by  
Mr. Wein. It will run from June 17 to 26, and its schedule is to be  
released on Thursday at carefusionjazz.com.

All this reconnaissance is a change of course. For a long time Mr.  
Wein ran the fairly formulaic, big-ticket JVC Jazz Festival in New  
York and relied on employees of his production company, Festival  
Productions, for programming ideas. The festival imploded under debt  
last year after Mr. Wein sold Festival Productions. But now he has a  
new (if smaller) company, New Festival Productions, and he’s taking on  
much of the programming himself.

The sponsorship by CareFusion, a medical technology company, amounts  
to about a half-million dollars, said Mr. Wein, almost comparable to  
what JVC provided. That will cover several Carnegie Hall bookings that  
are his predictable standby hits: the pianists Keith Jarrett and  
Herbie Hancock, the bossa-nova pioneer João Gilberto, the trumpeter  
Chris Botti. But the schedule also includes a lot of club concerts by  
jazz’s younger challengers: Darcy James Argue’s Secret Society; the  
quartet Mostly Other People Do the Killing; a large ensemble culled  
from the jazz-hip-hop collective Revive da Live, including the rapper  
Talib Kweli; a new trio of the pianist Jason Moran, the guitarist Mary  
Halvorson and the trumpeter Ron Miles; and bands led by Eric Revis,  
Matana Roberts and Craig Taborn, among others.

“What is jazz today?” Mr. Wein ruminated. “It’s a different world. As  
a producer I have to recognize that. I don’t have a lot of older  
people in my festival now, except at Carnegie. I don’t want the old  
names this year. I’ll do them another year.”

The new festival’s emphasis on clubs is significant. In the JVC days  
Mr. Wein concentrated his bookings in larger theaters: Carnegie, the  
Beacon, various Lincoln Center rooms. As an add-on, in some years he  
approached Manhattan clubs like the Village Vanguard, offered them  
free festival advertising and let them book their own rooms as usual.  
In return, the clubs would hang the festival’s banner on their stages.

“JVC became basically a Carnegie Hall festival, with a few little side  
things,” he said.

But this year Mr. Wein is consulting with the club owners, paying the  
musicians and letting the clubs keep the door money. In one case — the  
Jazz Gallery — he’s helping book the club throughout the festival and  
putting on a larger concert at Symphony Space by an ad-hoc band called  
the Jazz Gallery All-Stars: a crew of excellent musicians associated  
with the small club, including Roy Hargrove, Claudia Acuña, Ambrose  
Akinmusire and Gerald Clayton.

The focus on clubs is a good sign for the festival: it is an  
investment in jazz’s daily working life. Because clubs are where jazz  
culture lives, this move seems likely to benefit everyone — musicians,  
clubs, audiences and maybe even Mr. Wein.

“But we won’t make any money,” he cautioned. “If I break even I’ll be  
very happy. I’m just doing things to do them. I’m not finished, and  
I’m not tired anymore. I got a burst of energy.”