FULLERTON : JAZZ FEST’S 15TH YEAR: A SURVIVOR

Financial problems forced the Orange Coast College Jazz Festival to call it quits last month after 18 years, but the event’s younger and slightly more prosperous sibling--the Fullerton College Jazz Festival--appears to be stronger than ever.

On Friday and Saturday at seven locations around the campus, the college’s 15th annual festival will draw nearly 4,000 jazz musicians from 190 junior highs, high schools and colleges in California, Oregon, Nevada, Arizona and Utah.

“According to the best information we have, this is the largest jazz festival of its kind in the country,” said Terry Blackley, Fullerton College’s dean of fine arts. Blackley started the event in 1973 with just eight bands “as a way to encourage local high schools to get a jazz program going.”

Blackley said the festival’s annual budget (about $15,000 to $20,000 this year) has been self-sustaining since 1982 through entry fees paid by participating vocal and instrumental groups and concession sales.

The number of groups taking part is up by 40 over last year, an increase that reflects the demise of the Orange Coast College Jazz Festival as well as an annual festival in Reno that was canceled this year, Blackley said.

“We have a little different format from the Orange Coast jazz festival. They used to bring in quite a bit of big-name talent, and that gets very expensive. We keep it limited to one or two guest artists.”

That means no stellar jazz names such as Buddy Rich, Count Basie, Woody Herman and others who frequented the Orange Coast College festival. This year’s performers in Fullerton are singers Richard Carpenter (formerly of the Carpenters) and Sonny Wilkinson, who will appear at the end of Friday’s vocal jazz program. Saxophonist Larry Morgan and keyboard player Frank Mantooth will be featured during Saturday’s student instrumentalists.

All jazz performances, including the guest concerts, are free and open to the public both days from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. Additionally, members of the college’s jazz staff and guest musicians will offer participants free instructional clinics, sponsored by the National Assn. of Jazz Educators. Blackley said 12 scholarships will be awarded to a summer jazz music camp in Idyllwild through a grant from the Music Performance Trust Fund of the American Federation of Musicians’ union.

“We are not subsidized by the college or any taxpayer dollars,” said Blackley, who attributed the festival’s relative financial stability “quite honestly to the hard work of the staff. This is a year-round project. So as soon as this is over, on May 1 we’ll start working on next year’s.”

Since the Fullerton festival was born, Blackley said, “I’ve seen a great amount of growth, not only in this area, but in jazz education in general. At the time we started, maybe one in three schools around here had any sort of jazz band. Now at least 90% of high schools statewide have some form of jazz band.”

Even though more educational budget cuts threaten to further emasculate music programs at the elementary and secondary school level, Blackley is optimistic that the programs will survive. “Music and sports are always things that they consider a frill,” he said. “After 15 years of going through this, we’ve pretty much got it down, and I don’t see any problems with keeping it going in the future. I’d say big band music is alive and well in Orange County.”