Defining ‘Festival’--It’s Much More Than a Name

When is a jazz festival not a jazz festival?

The Southern California summer jazz festival season is in full swing. Last weekend, more than 4,000 fans trooped to the Pasadena Jazz Festival, and an estimated 20,000 fans are expected to descend on the Long Beach Jazz Festival tonight through Sunday.

The season begins each June with the area’s crowning annual event, the Playboy Jazz Festival at the Hollywood Bowl. The season concludes over the Labor Day weekend with the Los Angeles Classic Jazz Festival.

With so many affairs calling themselves jazz festivals, some questions arise: What constitutes a jazz festival? And what makes for a great festival?

Here’s the bottom line: An event that takes place over two or more days at a single venue and includes multiple concerts with several performers on each bill is a jazz festival.

So the four-concert Pasadena event, held at Ambassador Auditorium last Saturday and Sunday, definitely qualifies, as does Long Beach, which is held in the port city’s Shoreline Park over a three-day period and spotlights almost 20 top contemporary jazz ensembles.

Many festivals, such as the renowned New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival or the Long Beach fest, take place outdoors or in nearby multiple venues, and also feature crafts and food booths, adding to the festive atmosphere.

“A festival is really a feeling, more than any kind of rule that it’s so many acts,” said Darlene Chan, associate producer for George Wein’s Festival Productions, which produces the Playboy festival.

Chan, who has been involved in producing jazz festivals since 1962, when she started a 25-year stint with the Monterey Jazz Festival, offered her definition of what is not a festival: “It’s not just a three-hour show with two groups,” she said.

For example, Aug. 23’s JVC Jazz at the Bowl, which includes Herbie Hancock, Wayne Shorter and others playing a tribute to Miles Davis, as well as Chick Corea and Gerald Albright and Bela Fleck, is not a festival--it’s a concert or a show.

The best jazz festivals have always been those where the finest available artists are on the bill and where, at least part of the time, there is a one-of-a-kind musical happening, such as ad hoc bands put together specifically for a festival season--for example, the New York Jazz Giants, which appeared at Playboy this year--or new works commissioned from major composers, as happened in the early years of the Monterey Jazz Festival. The JVC Jazz Festival New York, the New Orleans event and Playboy generally offer something unique each year.

Jazz fans give top honors to the New Orleans festival, a 10-day event held in the Crescent City each spring since 1968 that currently attracts about 350,000 fans to its program of jazz, Cajun, blues and gospel concerts. “It’s fun, it’s got the jazz spirit, and it’s not so commercial as other festivals,” said Chan, who ranks the Heritage event at the top of her festival list, even over her own Playboy gala.

Chan believes it’s essential to offer commercial acts that appeal to a wide spectrum of the listening audience.

“We have to bring in bodies,” she said. “If I put on an all-traditional program at Playboy, I’ll do 10,000 people at best.” The two-day Playboy festival, which has always included many pop-jazz acts on its schedule, has regularly sold out the 17,500-seat amphitheater since it began in 1979.

The Long Beach affair, which features Joe Sample and Jon Lucien tonight, Earl Klugh and George Howard on Saturday and Poncho Sanchez and Ramsey Lewis on Sunday, is another commercially oriented event, focusing on jazz-fusion acts that will draw both jazz and pop listeners.

Like most festivals these days, the Long Beach event has a sponsor: Coors Light beer. “Without sponsors, we’d have no festivals,” said Chan.

Now, let’s get to the tough question: Are any of these Southern California events really great? The answer is, sadly, no, mainly because none offer the range of surprises, or the mix of artists of the New Orleans festival, or the great festivals of Europe--like the North Sea in the Hague, Netherlands, or the Grande Parade du Jazz in Nice, France. Playboy comes close, but the sponsor’s priority of selling out the Bowl instead of putting on a musically first-class event precludes that from happening.

What might be an ideal festival? The Monterey festival comes immediately to mind. There, in various years between 1958 and 1968, there were such state-of-the-art offerings as Duke Ellington’s orchestra performing “Suite Thursday” or Dizzy Gillespie doing Lalo Schifrin’s “Gillespiana,” both works commissioned for the event.

After a long dearth of creative booking, Monterey is finally back this year with a dynamic lineup that includes the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra, which plays the Bowl in September, as well as Branford Marsalis’ quartet and others.

Playboy, or Long Beach, or Pasadena, for that matter, could raise their musical standing by incorporating more unusual combinations. For instance, ask Al Jarreau to sing with Count Basie’s band, get B. B. King to play with the Brecker Brothers, commission McCoy Tyner to write a work for the Clayton-Hamilton big band, or Tony Williams to craft a piece for the Breckers. In other words, create the unexpected.

In the meantime, fans keep turning out for these events. “We did very well this year,” said Ambassador Foundation’s David Hulme, which sponsored the Pasadena festival. “We were able to make a donation of $10,000 to the American Red Cross, and that’s double what we gave a charity last year. We hope to keep on expanding.”

Critic’s Choice: McCoy Tyner may not bring along the Clayton-Hamilton aggregation to his Tuesday through Aug. 23 stint at Catalina Bar & Grill, but he will be there with his humongous sound, his propulsive drive, his shake-the-stage tremolos. The pianist’s essays of originals and standards are not for the fainthearted, but weather one of his musical storms and you’ll experience one of the most compelling artists anywhere.