Jazz Pacific: Steppingstone to a Major Festival, Supporters Hope

Two seemingly contradictory philosophies were at play Sunday as Jazz Pacific, a new grass-roots organization aimed at cultivating the county’s jazz scene, launched itself with a modest festival featuring area musicians.

One was “think big.” The other was “small is beautiful.” In Jazz Pacific’s game plan, they are not mutually exclusive.

Bill Scott, a musician and founding member of Jazz Pacific, was doing some of the biggest thinking as the eight-hour festival unfolded at the Ambrosia Restaurant in Costa Mesa.

“Newport, R.I., can do it. Monterey can do it. Why can’t Costa Mesa do it?” the dapper, white-haired bassist said, in a way that was less a question than an exclamation--it, in this case, being the staging of an annual, multiday jazz festival featuring big-name performers.

Charles (Doc) Rutherford, the president of Jazz Pacific, knows all that it entails, and he was being more circumspect.

As head of the jazz program at Orange Coast College, Rutherford directed the school’s annual jazz festival, a leading event on the county’s musical calendar for 18 years before its demise a year ago. Such greats as Duke Ellington and Dizzy Gillespie performed at the festival, along with high school and college bands that came from around the country to compete in front of panels of jazz experts. In its last years, before it finally fell victim to lingering financial woes, it had been sustained by the fund-raising efforts of the Coast Jazz Society, an organization of jazz buffs similar in concept to the new Jazz Pacific.

Jazz Pacific won’t attempt any events on such a large scale, at least on its own, Rutherford said. “We have pulled back. Everything is going to be smaller.” Instead of “a large festival that runs two or three days,” he envisions a daylong event once every two or three months, with the focus on Orange County musicians.

But Rutherford’s vision of slowly building an organization of jazz supporters doesn’t preclude thinking big. Like Bill Scott, he sees Jazz Pacific as a catalyst for a major jazz festival in Orange County.

“A jazz society like this won’t thrive unless people have a major goal,” Rutherford said as he sat in a hallway at the Ambrosia, where concerts by small groups were proceeding simultaneously in two separate rooms. “Once you get a major project, you get your motivation.”

For its series of single-day festivals, Jazz Pacific will work with local hotels, restaurants and clubs, booking talent for the events, publicizing them and perhaps coming up with a share of the money for hiring musicians. To achieve its larger goal, Jazz Pacific will have to succeed as a lobbyist rather than as a promoter--persuading corporations to finance a major jazz festival and enlisting local governments and chambers of commerce to help push it as a big cultural event for the county. Rutherford and Scott envision a festival with the Orange County Performing Arts Center as the main stage, with smaller events taking place at neighboring venues such as the Ambrosia and the Westin South Coast Plaza hotel.

Rutherford said he began organizing Jazz Pacific after some local musicians approached him last fall about starting a new grass-roots group to replace the one that had been formed to keep the Orange Coast College Jazz Festival afloat.

The group will try to add more structure to a local jazz scene that Rutherford says has improved over the past decade or so.

“We have more jazz in Orange County. I can’t say it’s terrific, but I think it’s better. I talk to jazz musicians. They say it’s better, and that’s my yardstick.”

The leading light in Sunday’s lineup was trombonist Bill Watrous, a Los Angeles-based Grammy award winner who often played at the Orange Coast College jazz festivals.

“I am supportive of anything Dr. Rutherford has anything to do with,” said Watrous, who didn’t let a lingering case of the flu stop him from appearing with his quartet in an afternoon set. “Anybody who turns out such swinging bands as he does (as director of OCC’s student bands) has to be doing something right.”

Early in the day, Scott was hoping that Jazz Pacific’s inaugural event would draw 1,000 people or more. It ended up a far more qualified success, with an official attendance of 185.

“I was a little disappointed,” Scott said on Tuesday after collecting the attendance figures, “but not too much. The people there were enthusiastic, and I think word-of-mouth is the best advertising. After all was said and done, we came out with $1,200 to put in the bank, which isn’t bad. We’ve seen a little black ink instead of red, which gives us an incentive.”

Karen Levin, the Ambrosia Restaurant’s general manager--and a jazz fan herself--liked what she heard well enough to propose working with Jazz Pacific on a monthly series of concerts spotlighting Orange County groups.

“To me, you have to keep the momentum going,” she said. “You have to constantly let patrons see that the talent is here” in order to build a following. For now, the next event on Jazz Pacific’s schedule is another all-day festival, the Newporter All American Jazz Festival, May 30 at the Newporter Resort in Newport Beach.

From where I stand, the low point of the recent Grammy awards ceremony didn’t lie in the usual self-congratulation by an industry that is more in need of self-examination (U2 provided a bit of that); nor even in comic Jackie Mason’s bumbling visit to some private Twilight Zone of ignorance and bad taste. It came when Lou Reed, celebrated as one of rock’s most uncompromising figures, sang an expurgated version of “Walk on the Wild Side” that deleted a verse containing an R-rated sexual episode.

Reed’s endorsements of Honda motorcycles and American Express cards can be rationalized or justified-- after all, he is a motorcycle enthusiast and maybe he really doesn’t leave home without his charge card--but there is no excuse for bowing so obviously to television’s dictates. Reed should have set aside “Wild Side,” his sole Top 40 hit, and sung another song. He has recorded many other--and much better--songs that would have fit thematically into the New York City tribute segment that featured “Wild Side”--notably “Sweet Jane,” or “Tell It to Your Heart,” an exquisite love song full of New York scenes.