By Brian Brennan
Chick Corea was supposed to play Calgary this Friday night, followed by Ben E. King on Saturday night. But that won’t happen now because C-Jazz, the local organizers of the Calgary Jazz Festival, have abruptly pulled the plug on the annual event.
Is it possible the shows will still go on? Likely not. The last time a Calgary jazz festival was forced to fold — in 2006 — an angel was waiting in the wings. The angel was the now troubled C-Jazz, which had been formed six years earlier when Jazz Festival Calgary became too big for its boots. Jazz Festival Calgary had been launched in 1980 with some 75th anniversary grant money from the provincial government. As Jazz Festival Calgary expanded, with more and more focus on international acts, C-Jazz emerged as a local organization dedicated to promoting Calgary jazz artists. With a grassroots rallying of citizens and performers, C-Jazz was able to save the 2006 jazz festival and keep it going until now.
Much the same thing happened in Edmonton. When that city’s famous Jazz City crashed in 2005, after running successfully for 25 years, jazz fans across the country were shocked. Jazz City was one of the longest-running international jazz festivals in Canada. If it could fail, who would be next? The answer, of course, was Calgary.
The Edmonton Jazz Society was the saviour that resurrected Edmonton’s jazz festival. It had been running the Yardbird Suite jazz club for several years, and it was ready and waiting to launch the new Edmonton International Jazz Festival when Jazz City went down. The new festival started modestly, with a focus on Edmonton and other Canadian talent, and built slowly with the help of Jazz Festivals Canada. Its headliners this year include Chick Corea — who will thus be able to salvage something from his now-shortened Canadian tour — Nikki Yanofsky and John Pizzarelli.
Chick Corea in a 2007 performance
Jazz City and Jazz Festival Calgary both died because of money woes. The C-Jazz folks now find themselves in the same boat. They don’t have the cash flow to cover the day-to-day expenses of the festival, and there’s no angel in the wings ready to bail them out. Has their festival, like its predecessor, gotten into trouble because it became too big for its boots? Perhaps. It has come a long way from its Calgary-oriented roots over the past four years, regularly featuring such big names as Dave Brubeck, Wynton Marsalis, and Allen Toussaint. Great for Calgary jazz fans, but not so great for C-Jazz’s bottom line. Last year’s festival left C-Jazz with what the Calgary Herald describes as a “significant deficit.” A scaled-down version of the festival for this year would seem to have been the right way to go. But when the board members looked at the books this past weekend, even that option became impossible. Too bad.
First published on http://brianbrenn.wordpress.com/
As usual all the questions never get answered and no one is checking to see where the money went. Our Jazz Festival has a history of take the money and run. We used to have one of the best Jazz Festivals in Canada before this started to happen. A friend said years ago “How can a festival go bankrupt when it’s sponsored and mostly run with volunteers?” The real Jazz Festival was the 2 days at Olympic Plaza. Grant at CJSW said the Corea Concert was close to breaking even. Even with the cancellation, they have to pay for the advertising, venue and artist. Why say the Festival is canceled instead of saying we can’t proceed with some of our shows. It was like they were trying to hurt Beat Niqs, Cantos and other venues who paid for the Jazz Fest to advertise their shows and were not canceled. Why did the executive board approve of overspending last year and this year? Canceling the Festival made as much sense as hiring a Rock Band from Nelson at last years festival. For some unknown reason, someone took vengeance on the Jazz Fans, Jazz Clubs and Jazz musicians of Calgary.
In light of the recent cancellation of the Jazzfest and the negative publicity surrounding it, we of the jazz community are rallying to bring a positive note to the community and draw attention to the gigs that are proceeding this week.
Let’s lend our voices to celebrating what’s right with jazz in Calgary – our incredible pool of talent, fans who’ve remained loyal through thick & thin, venues who are presenting many of the shows that were cancelled, & media who’ve consistently spread the message. Bring your instruments & voices join the jazz parade today, starting at 4pm at Olympic Plaza & making it’s way to Beat Niq, “Dixie” style.
JAZZ LIVES!
Sorry for the misunderstanding. What I think I said in the last paragraph of my post was that the Nikki Yanofsky/John Pizzarelli concert is part of this year’s Edmonton International Jazz Festival, which as I understand it still is (June 29 at the Winspear Centre). I didn’t say anything about a Calgary performance for Yanofsky and Pizzarelli.
TO the writer of this article and all readers: The Nikki Yanofsky/John Pizzarelli concert on Monday June 28th at Jack Singer Hall was NOT cancelled and was never a part of the C-Jazz Festival lineup. This is a completely separate concert promoted by another company, not affiliated with the jazz festival. The last thing we would want is for this incorrect information to make people think the show is cancelled – it is not, and tickets are still available.
Sincerely,
Scott Morin (Nikki Yanofsky management)