Fans Not Shut Out From Near-Sellout Festival

The 19th annual Playboy Jazz Festival at the Hollywood Bowl, which begins its weekend run Saturday at 2:30 p.m., is once again a sellout. Some obstructed-view seats are available for both days, but everything else is booked.

In 1995, jazz fans, despite the sellout, had the attractive option of hearing the music broadcast live over radio station KLON-FM (88.1). Last year, however, Playboy and KLON decided to take a different approach, taping the entire festival program for later rebroadcast.

The same policy holds true this year, with the rebroadcast scheduled for July 4 and 5. The two programs--which will follow the programming order of the festival--will be supplemented with artist interviews between the music segments. George Benson, however, has elected not to have his performance included, and the segment featuring the Joe Henderson big band will be limited to 30 minutes, rather than the full hourlong set.

KLON’s production of the program will be made available to NPR stations around the country for broadcast in four-hour minimum segments during the period between July 4 and Labor Day.

Another side benefit of the Playboy Jazz Festival is the occasional opportunity to hear musicians who rarely turn up in the Southland perform outside the festival’s boundaries. This year, Los Van Van, the spectacular Cuban dance and Latin jazz band, plays a jazz-oriented set at the festival on Saturday evening, then moves to its more natural environment--an auditorium----for a vigorous dance set at the Palladium.

On the same night, Orange County jazz fans will have an opportunity to beat festival-goers to the draw when the Mike Holober Quintet, whose leader was the winner of the 1966 Cognac Hennessy Jazz Search, plays a gig at Steamers Cafe in Fullerton on the evening before his Sunday festival debut.

Where’s the Jazz:

The spring edition of Grammy--an official publication of the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences, and influential because it is received by the academy’s full membership of music business movers and shakers--reveals a disturbing absence of jazz and classical music coverage. The publication, a slick 34-page edition dedicated, in this issue, to the 39th annual Grammy Awards, manages to include a series of stories covering pop, country, rock and blues with barely a mention of jazz or classical music. There are features on Beck, Eric Clapton and Celine Dion, among others, and a five-page interview with Ray Davies; There is a page-long article on the technical details of producing the Grammy Awards show, and a page of congratulatory letters to the academy.

But, although jazz musicians won Grammy Awards, there apparently was no room for any references to jazz other than a small photo of Cassandra Wilson and brief paragraphs of biographical material about Charles Mingus, Stephane Grappelli and Oscar Peterson, who were among a group of artists receiving lifetime achievement awards. Classical music doesn’t even get that much attention.

According to Michael Greene, president of NARAS, the omissions were regrettable, but unintentional.

“We get complaints about not covering one form of music or another,” Greene said. “But jazz and classical are just too important not to be at the top of the list. And I was totally knocked out when I realized that, other than a couple of pictures and the bios . . ., there wasn’t anything in there. . . . And, at least in the next couple of issues, we’re going to make an attempt to do something much more substantive.”

If so, it will be a welcome change. An overview of the past six issues of Grammy magazine--which include jazz items limited to stories on pianists Ran Blake and Fred Hersch, and news items on Joe Williams, Dave Brubeck and the Jazz Film Preservation Project--doesn’t reveal much in the way of “substantive” coverage of jazz or classical music.

Under the circumstances, it’s not surprising that a number of organizations in the jazz community are searching for a way to create an awards process that will properly acknowledge the music’s accomplishments, as well as its once-again reemerging importance in American culture. How much better if would be if the academy --the logical organization to provide that acknowledgment--would step up and take the lead.

Benefit: Friends of jazz diva Stephanie Haynes are throwing a fund-raiser for the singer, who was recently hit with heavy medical expenses. The event, which will include an unpredictable, but no doubt major lineup of local talent, takes place Tuesday at the Jazz Bakery. A $15 contribution is requested for a full evening of music, (310) 271-9039.

Free Music: Vocalist Sandra Booker’s Quartet plays a free program at the L.A. County Museum of Art, today at 5:30 p.m. . . . The Bill Berry big band plays a free concert at the same venue on Sunday at noon, (213) 857-6010. . . . The John Bolivar Quartet performs in Pedrini Music’s free Saturday afternoon jazz concert, at 1:30 p.m., (818) 289-0241. . . . And the Sandra Booker Quartet appears in another free program on Thursday at the Museum of Contemporary Art at 5 p.m. (213) 621-1749.