Sold-Out Playboy Celebration Isn’t Singing the Festival Blues : Jazz: In uncertain times for festivals, the annual Playboy concerts bridge the generation gap with a blend of old and new.

The Playboy Jazz Festival makes its annual appearance at the Hollywood Bowl this weekend in an atmosphere of uncertainty for jazz. The recent deaths of Sarah Vaughan and Dexter Gordon have underscored both the importance and the fragility of the icon generation of jazz artists. For many of the music’s most avid listeners, jazz is almost inconceivable without the presence of figures like Vaughan, Gordon and others of their generation.

“It hasn’t been a good year,” said festival producer George Wein. “We’ve always had a Sarah Vaughan concert as part of our New York Festival, and I’ve got no one to replace her with. There’s just going to be a blank space on our schedule. People like Sarah and Dexter can’t be replaced. And that’s a real problem.”

Wein is the world’s busiest producer of jazz festivals. (“We may not all love him, all the time,” said one musician who asked for anonymity, “but George has probably employed more jazz musicians than anybody else in the entire history of the music.”) As a practical businessman, he tries to make adjustments as conditions change, but his faith in jazz is wavering.

“I’m just not thrilled by a lot of the new music I hear,” Wein said, “and there’s not much coming down the pike to replace the old music.”

Jazz record producer Michael Cuscuna noted that in the late ‘60s and ‘70s most young musicians turned to rock instead of jazz. “An entire generation of jazz musicians just never appeared,” Cuscuna said. “Which is why there are so few major players in their 30s and 40s.”

This weekend’s Playboy Jazz Festival, however, is one of the events that seems impervious to generation gaps. With Miles Davis, Lionel Hampton and Gerry Mulligan topping programs that balance traditional rhythms with contemporary sounds, the festival is once again a sellout.

“Some festivals are like that,” Wein explained. “They just have the right ambience. I have a number of events that sell out in advance, even though people don’t know who’s playing. Audiences come to some festivals--to Playboy, to Saratoga, to Newport, to New Orleans, to Jimmy Lyons’ Monterey Festival--for the atmosphere and the ambience, and they’ll always do well.”

Other festivals are more problematic. Wein sees growing difficulties in venues with large halls and extended dates.

“I do concerts in 1,000-seat halls with world-famous musicians and sometimes I sell 300 or 400 tickets. In a lot of cases I’d be happy to just break even, or maybe come out at a slight deficit, which would be OK because the sponsor money would at least keep us going. But sometimes I can’t even do that.”

Wein sees a possible solution in smaller halls and reduced budgets. Over the years, he has tried to keep his festivals in touch with changing trends via infusions of contemporary jazz, funk, fusion and world music.

Another possibility is the development of more atmosphere-styled festivals, like the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival, which spreads across the infield of a race track. Music is performed on 11 different stages and the grounds are filled with food stands and folk artisans. The Grande Parade Du Jazz in Nice is located in the even more atmospheric setting of the Cimiez Gardens, with music spread around three different stages.

“I’m not in love with the idea of more ambience, more world music,” said Wein, “but if it helps keep the festivals alive, we’ll do it, even though it’s not the route that I’m looking for.”

Cuscuna feels one of the solutions is for still-active veterans like Art Blakey, Max Roach and Dizzy Gillespie to provide leadership, maturity and a point of view for the emerging generation of acoustically oriented musicians. “But there just aren’t enough guys--nurturing leaders--like that around,” he said.

“I used to play people like Duke Ellington for $4,000 a week,” Wein recalled. “Sarah Vaughan and Ella Fitzgerald cost $2,500 a week, and Basie’s band, $3,350 a week. Once we started with them, it was only a matter of time before they jumped out to a larger level.

“Maybe it can happen again. I’m not sure. But I do know that, from my point of view, I’d be happy to hear more rhythm sections playing a swinging, straight-ahead, be-bop beat.”