alocispepraluger102 Posted July 13, 2012 Report Share Posted July 13, 2012 a local jazzman rips........ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CraigP Posted July 13, 2012 Report Share Posted July 13, 2012 I do think the other musician that responded has a point: that he shouldn't criticize if he's boycotting the festival and not participating as musician, or audience. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ejp626 Posted July 13, 2012 Report Share Posted July 13, 2012 I do think the other musician that responded has a point: that he shouldn't criticize if he's boycotting the festival and not participating as musician, or audience. I don't know the history: how many times he applied or expected to get asked and then gave up. I will say that if (some of) your headline acts are Rufus Wainwright and a disco act, you are on very thin ice to keep calling yourself a jazz festival. Still, it appears that Shorter played there, as well as Stefon Harris and Stanley Clarke. I feel the Vancouver Jazz Festival is getting a bit diluted, but the headliners were all pretty solid jazz acts: Wayne Shorter, Dianne Reeves, Bill Frissell and George Benson. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
alocispepraluger102 Posted July 13, 2012 Author Report Share Posted July 13, 2012 one of the components in the jazz heyday was a recognizable popular music to which folks related. without this base, jazz, as we define it, cannot survive for general public appeal. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AllenLowe Posted July 13, 2012 Report Share Posted July 13, 2012 that's the way it always happens, and he's absolutely right. The festivals get bigger and bigger, the locals get bupkis, and the festival turns to crap. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GA Russell Posted July 13, 2012 Report Share Posted July 13, 2012 These popular music festivals in New Orleans and Montreal make a lot of money for some people. I went to the 1990 and 1991 New Orleans Jazzfests. They had a jazz stage on which modern jazz was played at all times. It never stopped. I don't know if that is true for Montreal's. If a jazz fan can go to a festival and hear non-stop jazz, that's good enough for me. He can ignore the non-jazz music that appeals to others. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CJ Shearn Posted July 13, 2012 Report Share Posted July 13, 2012 I think the gentleman has a point. There are a lot of festivals being called "jazz festivals" that have nothing to do with jazz. For example, the Syracuse Jazz Festival, saw a headline ad in Downbeat, not one act (including the "big" one Mr. Gorelick)was a jazz act. I think smooth jazz fools a lot of people into thinking those are "jazz festivals", which it seems that most festivals get their "jazz" content from. At least Montreux calls itself an International Music Festival now, although its still known as the Montreux Jazz Festival, I think the jazz content shrinks to about 3 days each year, right? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
six string Posted July 26, 2012 Report Share Posted July 26, 2012 It's not a festival but Yoshi's in the SF Bay Area, both venues are hosting fewer jazz artists on any given week or month. I realise that many of the old guard have passed on in recent years but it's not like there aren't new jazz artists available to fill the void. It makes me wonder if the younger artists are finding other ways of making money like teaching and so have no use for traveling the country/world to play their music. It seems that the jazz audience has shrunk even more in the last decade or so to the point that jazz clubs and festivals can't expect big sales at the box office anymore. Lets face it, older fans don't get out as much as they did when they were younger which only compounds the problems of funding. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GA Russell Posted July 26, 2012 Report Share Posted July 26, 2012 I imagine that one current problem is that in these hard economic times people are not going to festivals they have already been to before. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Van Basten II Posted July 27, 2012 Report Share Posted July 27, 2012 They call it the Montreal jazz fest because it's the brand name like Montreux gets called the same way. Normand is right unfortunately his opinion relates to about 5 % of the people, the other 95 don't give a damn. This year was really awful in terms of content, if you compare to other years despite having big names who have nothing to do with the music, you were able to build a solid programmation of 2 gigs a day with mostly relevant content , not this year as I ended up with days with little to do Here's a few examples of the people running it not caring about this type of music As invitation series the musicians featured were Stanley Clarke and Tord Gustavsen not exactly the best choices if you want to feature contemporary modern music while working with guys who had a versatile career , it's a personal opinion but can't say that Clarke has been relevant in the last 15 years and Gustavsen hasn't much of a career. Also the Jazz beat series which used to be the biggest series featuring contemporary musicians at the now demolished Spectrum was relegated at 6 pm and in a few gigs were halted after 75 minutes because the venue is used at 10 pm, never mind that tickets were sold around 50 $ for what seems like an opening act. Finally in the post-mortem, none of the organisators bothered to name a jazz act among their favorite moment By the way, regarding the content, compare it to the Ottawa and Vancouver jazz which still lets the music a big part of the process, gotta say if it wasn't for economical reasons (mostly housing costs) I would have rather attended these festivals instead of ours. To use a metaphor, jazz used to be the main passagers of this festival, then we had a bunch of other passengers and now it has been relegated to the back of the bus Final disclosure regarding Guilbeault he started a festival called the Off -festival which used to work in the same dates than the big one a few years ago in retaliation what he felt were slights against local jazz musicians who were a neglected part of the big one , the festival is now taking place in october and is still involved. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Morganized Posted August 4, 2012 Report Share Posted August 4, 2012 one of the components in the jazz heyday was a recognizable popular music to which folks related. without this base, jazz, as we define it, cannot survive for general public appeal. Agree 100%. That was the hook. Once in the door you can feed them solid food! When popular music did not lend itself well to improvisation, jazz began to decline. Many have tried to bridge the gap but with very uneven success. I viewed some of Herbie Hancock's more recent projects(New Standards and The River) as an acknowledgement of this. The River received critical acclaim winning a Grammy but not sure that it had the impact we all would hope. Still, it was nice to see Herbie and Wayne bringing their remarkable talent to the issue. There is no easy answer to the issue and the jazz fest organizers have their own set of problems trying to attract a crowd. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JSngry Posted August 5, 2012 Report Share Posted August 5, 2012 When popular music did not lend itself well to improvisation... I don't know what this means. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ted O'Reilly Posted August 5, 2012 Report Share Posted August 5, 2012 When popular music did not lend itself well to improvisation... I don't know what this means. I understand it to mean that "pop music was no longer interesting enough to use as a source for jazz musicians' improvisations". Sounds about right to me. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JSngry Posted August 5, 2012 Report Share Posted August 5, 2012 Oh well, then. "Jazz musicians' improvisation", not improvisation per se. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ted O'Reilly Posted August 6, 2012 Report Share Posted August 6, 2012 Oh well, then. "Jazz musicians' improvisation", not improvisation per se. "When popular music did not lend itself well to improvisation, jazz began to decline." Yeah -- kinda convoluted, because in effect he states that because pop music got bad, jazz went into decline. I think. Or maybe not, but let's blame The Monkees (because The Beatles did make a nice tune or two). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JSngry Posted August 6, 2012 Report Share Posted August 6, 2012 (edited) Yeah, let's blame The Monkees. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=faK8TxS-D1w And let's blame Michael Jackson. Let's not blame audiences and musicians alike for finding their own highly specific comfort zones and then blaming the world when those comfort zones no longer reflect the world at large. Because, you know, life is just not fair. And improvisation and creativity only takes one form. Edited August 6, 2012 by JSngry Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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