FINANCES KILL JAZZ FESTIVAL

After 18 years as one of Orange County’s most prestigious music events, the Orange Coast College Jazz Festival is dead.

The annual event, which mixed concerts by top jazz acts, adjudicated performances by student jazz ensembles from throughout the western United States and instructional clinics by professional musicians, has been canceled for lack of funds, a belated victim of post-Proposition 13 budget cutbacks.

Just a year ago, festival coordinator Charles (Doc) Rutherford talked enthusiastically about how the festival finally appeared to be reaching financial stability through a balance of private and college-supplied funds.

But earlier this week, Rutherford dejectedly talked about its demise as if delivering a eulogy for the festival he launched in 1969 when few Southern California schools offered jazz programs.

“We had a lot of great times,” Rutherford said. “When I think of all the players that have gone through our program, of all the good schools that have been here, of all the performers who have played here, I think it has had an impact on music in Orange County.”

“I think people are very concerned about not having it after 18 years,” he said. “I’ve received many phone calls from people in the community who are disappointed.”

Rutherford said the death knell was the “huge loss” at the 1986 jazz festival, which he estimated at $20,000. The Coast Jazz Society, a private organization of jazz buffs formed in 1980 to help compensate for the loss of state funds that previously fueled the festival, has been holding fund-raising events since then to pay off the debt, he said.

“The jazz society deserves a lot of credit for keeping the festival going these last seven years. But when you have losses year after year, one group is unable to sustain it,” he said.

Sitting in his tiny office at the Costa Mesa campus, Rutherford was surrounded by pictures of numerous jazz superstars who played the festival over the last two decades: Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Ella Fitzgerald, Dizzy Gillespie, Woody Herman, Louie Bellson, Al Jarreau, Gerry Mulligan, Buddy Rich and others.

In fact, Rich had been scheduled to perform Saturday in a scaled-down festival, but in February the renowned drummer canceled all appearances when he checked into UCLA Medical Center for treatment of a malignant brain tumor. The absence of Rich, perennially a sellout attraction, was the final blow to hopes for any sort of jazz festival this year, Rutherford said.

In place of a multifaceted festival, usually held during the last week of March, there will be a single concert today with the Shorty Rogers Big Band, sponsored by the college’s community services department and the Coast Jazz Society.

Always the optimist, though, Rutherford held out the possibility of reviving the festival. “The only way would be to find a sponsor,” he said. “That might mean taking it away from the campus, but if some sponsor came through with the money we need and it came to that, we could go off campus.”

Because jazz in Orange County is often relegated to dark corners of noisy, smoke-filled clubs, the OCC Jazz Festival was an event jazz enthusiasts could look forward to each year, knowing that the music would be given center-stage treatment in an alcohol-free setting.

It also showcased potential stars of the future in the remarkably proficient jazz ensembles from junior high schools, high schools and colleges throughout the West.

But in trying to present a variety of jazz styles besides sure-fire ticket sellers such as the Rich, Basie and Herman big bands, festival organizers ran into the problem that “the smaller groups just don’t draw as well. And since Proposition 13, when we look out and see a half-filled house, we just cringe.”

What distinguished Orange Coast’s festival from most were the clinics conducted by some of the performers featured in the headliner concerts. At those sessions, local student musicians as well as area professionals received advice and tips from experts on their respective instruments. But the added cost of paying clinicians made the festival more expensive to produce than conventional events that simply offer multiple-act concert lineups.

“There should be a festival just to get the schools involved,” he said. “I hate to see the schools go neglected. They need a place to go where they can perform and get that feedback from professional judges.”

Before the passage of Proposition 13 in 1978, the festival’s annual expense tab of $20,000 to $30,000 was picked up by the college. Rutherford admitted some frustration in watching more than $70 million in private donations go to build the Orange County Performing Arts Center while the jazz society’s hundreds of volunteers struggled to raise $25,000 each year.

“You’d think there would be someone out there with that kind of money who supported the Center who is also a jazz lover. It’s just a matter of finding them,” he said.

The end of the jazz festival, however, hasn’t put an end to jazz activities at the campus. The college’s own four jazz bands continue to perform regularly around the county, both as a method of fund raising (revenues are currently going into a fund for a May recording project) and to give the students valuable professional experience.

Orange Coast jazz groups will perform at the Hotel Meridien in Newport Beach on April 5, 12 and May 3, Rutherford said. Three OCC bands will also be featured May 25 in a one-day jazz festival at the Newporter Resort in Newport Beach, along with the Don Menza Quintet, the Matt Catingub Quartet, the Poncho Sanchez Latin Jazz Orchestra and several other groups.

Public response to a similar program last fall was “great,” Rutherford said, adding that he expects the Newporter-sponsored events to continue biannually.

“The money involved is really inexpensive compared to what we would put on (at the OCC Jazz Festival),” he said. “There will be no clinics, no school bands except ours. But it could be that the answer could be to take these festivals off campus. Maybe people need their cocktails.”

LIVE ACTION: Tickets go on sale Sunday for Huey Lewis & the News’ concerts at the Pacific Amphitheatre on June 12 and 13, the group’s only Southern California shows of the summer. . . . Tickets will also be available Sunday for Iron Maiden’s May 2 show at Irvine Meadows Amphitheatre. . . . Felix Cavaliere, the former lead singer of the Rascals, will play the Coach House in San Juan Capistrano on April 12. . . . The Unforgiven will perform at Night Moves in Huntington Beach on April 4. . . . Tender Fury will be at Big John’s in Anaheim on April 11.