A two-year adventure

Swedish pop-folk singer Sofia Talvik has just started a two-year United States tour, in which she plans to bring her fine music - mostly originals - to various locales as she hopscotches the continent in a refurbished old RV. The tour began here in Florida.

One of the early stops was last night at Warm Mineral Springs' Evergreen Cafe here in North Port. The Drivin' & Dreaming tour includes a stop in mid-March at SXSW (the highly regarded South by Southwest Music Conference, an industry showcase held annually) in Austin, Texas. We wish Sofia and her husband, Jonas, well on this adventure.

Warm Mineral Springs, is a natural wellness destination with an underground spring that provides some 9 million gallons a day of pure water containing 51 minerals.The springs, which is on the Natural Register of Historic Places as explorer Ponce de Leon's long-sought "Fountain of Youth," is now owned by Sarasota County.

Newport is just around the corner

If you're a Newport Folk Festival fan, or ardent fan of one if its acts this year, don't plan on showing up without a ticket, figuring you can score some ducats at the Fort Adams State Park box office.

For the first time, the folk festival (which began in 1959) as a supplement to George Wein's Newport Jazz Festival, has sold out all tickets (10,00 tickets for each day). The July 30-31 event, which is headlined by the likes of Emmylou Harris, Elvis Costello, The Decemberists, Earl Scruggs, Tegan and Sara, Mavis Staples and Ramblin' Jack Eliott.

Organizers said promotion of the event through the social networking media has been part of the success.

I'm curious how much of a similar effect will be in play a week later at the Newport Jazz Festival. The lineup is chronologically and stylistically diverse and terrific. Stay tuned.

England swings – JALC style…

Just as New York City’s attention will be focused on a bubbling array of jazz choices in late June with return of a George Wein-produced jazz festival in the Big Apple (the CareFusion Jazz Festival, running June 17 to 26), the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra has teamed up for an interesting out-of-town residency. Out-of-country, off-continent even. Across the pond.

JALC, with artistic director/trumpeter Wynton Marsalis and special guests, is off to the U.K. for a residency at London’s Barbican Centre, home of the London Symphony. In fact it is jazz jewel in the arts center’s first International Residency Series.

A series of three main JALC concerts (June 17, 18 and 20) will be augmented by a creative learning program, in local schools and at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama with workshops, master classes and professional development, as well as performances in several East London partner venues. They also include a swing dance evening at Stoke Newington Town Hall, jam sessions at the Vortex in Dalston, and a special family concert at Hackney Empire.

The three main Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra concerts will tell the story the story of the American jazz orchestra, celebrating 80 years of great big band music, from Jelly Roll Morton to the present day, curated by Marsalis. There’s also a June 19 “Big Band Britannia: Inspirations and Collaborations” at Barbican Hall that will celebrate eight decades of British big band music through a specially assembled big band led by trumpeter Guy Barker. It will include a tribute to mighty British big band jazz figure, the late Sir John Dankworth. The next afternoon, Marsalis and the JALC will present an English version of their popular Jazz for Young People matinee concerts, and an “Essentially Ellington UK” workshop for youth big bands.

During the week, there will also be a Midsummer Night's Swing series at several venues plus nightly after-hours jam sessions blending British and JALC jazz talent at East London jazz venues including the Vortex Jazz Club, the Hackney Empire Review Bar and others.

Schedule details may be found at www.barbican.org.uk.

Folk with a touch of jazz

Jazz festival fans can rejoice with something tangible in Newport. The 50th anniversary edition of the folk festival – George Wein’s Folk Festival 50 – opened without a hitch today, under brilliant sunshine. It means Wein’s revived jazz festival is less than a week away.

You’ve doubtless read elsewhere, or in postings below, of the financial saga that forced Wein to regain control of festival-producing in Newport and begin work on yet another phase of production in the city where the festival tradition began (jazz in 1954, folk in 1959).

George Wein and Pete Seeger arrive at Fort Adams State Park… >
A crowd of 9,200 turned out for day one, the largest for a folk event in Newport since Bob Dylan returned in 2002. The lineup was a careful blend of veterans, like Seeger and Ramblin’ Jack Elliott and Mavis Staples, and younger and emerging talent. The crowd was a blend of festival veteran attendees and what seemed a majority of much younger fans.

There was even a touch of jazz. When folk festival stalwart Pete Seeger, now 90, closed out the day with a traditional main-stage sing-along featuring about 30 festival artists, they were joined by Ben Jaffe the Preservation Hall Jazz Band leader and bassist, on tuba.

Seeger's message lives on his banjo… >

UPDATE: Jaffe also sat in Sunday with Del McCoury's bluegrass band and joined the evening sing-along finale with Seeger, Joan Baez, Judy Collins, McCoury and many, many others.

George Wein’s CareFusion Jazz Festival 55 begins Friday night August 7 at Newport’s International Tennis Hall of Fame and continues the following two days at Fort Adams State Park with a strong and diverse lineup.

The complete Newport lineup

George Wein has added a great variety of musicians to his lineup for the jazz festival in Newport in August, scheduled August 7-9 and called "George Wein's JAZZ FESTIVAL 55."

This will be the 55th anniversary of the Newport Jazz Festival's first edition back in 1954. And the Friday night opener, as usual, is at the Newport Casino (International Tennis Hall of Fame) site that was the festival's home in 1954.

The new additions include singer, MC, musician and actor Mos Def, the dynamic MC, Jamaican guitarist Ernest Ranglin, singer Claudia Acuna, the Branford Marsalis Quartet and the Branford Marsalis-Joey Calderazzo duo, the Vandermark 5, and Rashied Ali-Charles Gayle-William Parker's "By Any Means.

Brian Blade and Christopher Thomas from The Brian Blade Fellowship, Newport 2008... >

Here is the full schedule as of today:
FRIDAY, AUGUST 7 - International Tennis Hall of Fame, 8 p.m.
Etta James and The Roots Band

SATURDAY, AUGUST 8 - Fort Adams State Park, 11:30 a.m. to 7 p.m.
Mos Def; Branford Marsalis Quartet; Joshua Redman Double Trio; Esperanza Spalding; Cedar Walton All-Stars with Lew Tabackin & Curtis Fuller; Hiromi's SonicBloom; Vandermark 5; Christian McBride; Vijay Iyer Trio; Miguel Zenón Quartet, North Carolina Central Big Band, Branford Marsalis-Joey Calderazzo duo, Claudia Acuña.

SUNDAY, AUGUST 9 - Fort Adams State Park. 11:30 a.m. to 7 p.m.
Tony Bennett; Dave Brubeck Quartet; Roy Haynes' Fountain of Youth Band; Michel Camilo; Joe Lovano's Us Five; The Bad Plus with singer Wendy Lewis; Ernest Ranglin;Conversations with Christian McBride; Millennial Territory Orchestra; Brian Blade & The Fellowship Band; Rudresh Mahanthappa's Indo-Pak Coalition; Rashied Ali-Charles Gayle-William Parker's "By Any Means;" Afredo Rodriguez; The Rodriguez Brothers.

Tickets for the Fort Adams events go on sale tomorrow. Tickets for the Etta James performance go on sale May 13.

Wein's Newport return clears final hurdle

George Wein's Newport return this summer to produce jazz and folk festivals in the city where his festival legacy began has cleared its final hurdle.

The Newport City Council gave Wein permission in a 5-0 vote last Thursday evening to produce his two events after the apparent demise of Festival Network LLC, the upstart company that bought his Festival Productions Inc. two years ago then ran its expanded enterprise into the ground. At least that's how it appears, with word the company lost millions last year and still has vendors waiting for funds they are owed.

Wein's new firm, which is having nothing to do with FN, is called New Festival Productions, LLC. Tickets go on sale this Thursday for the 55th anniversary event of the jazz festival and on May 6 for the 50th anniversary edition of the folk festival. Each festival will include two full days of music on three stages at Fort Adams State Park and a Friday evening concert at Newport Casino, home of the International Tennis Hall of Fame.

Confirmed artists for "George Wein's JAZZ FESTIVAL 55" August 7 to 9 include Tony Bennett, Branford Marsalis, Etta James, Esperanza Spalding, the Dave Brubeck Quartet, Vijay Iyer Trio, Cedar Walton with Lew Tabackin and Curtis Fuller, the Christian McBride Group, Roy Haynes Quintet, Joshua Redman Double Trio, Hiromi, The Bad Plus joined by Wendy Lewis, Michel Camilo, Joe Lovano, Rudresh Mahanthappa, Miguel Zenon, Brian Blade & the Fellowship Band, and the Rodriguez Brothers.

Confirmed artists for "George Wein's FOLK FESTIVAL 50" July 31 to August 2 includes festival co-founder Pete Seeger, The Decemberists, Arlo Guthrie, Fleet Foxes, Joan Baez, Neko Case, Judy Collins, Campbell Brothers, The Avett Brothers, Josh Ritter, Gillian Welch, Del McCoury, Iron & Wine, Tao Rodriguez Seeger, Balfa Toujours, Elvis Perkins in Dearland, Tim Eriksen and the Shape Note Singers, Langhorne Slim, Ben Kweller and Low Anthem.

The complete festival programs will be announced later this month.

Ticket detail is available at http://www.jazzfestival55.com/ and http://www.folkfestival50.com/.

In its heyday, Wein's former operation produced dozens and dozens of festivals all over the world. When he sold his company to Festival Network, he also sold the rights to the names Newport Jazz Festival and Newport Folk Festival. Hence the new event names this year.

Also gone are the festivals produced elsewhere, for the most part. There is no grand festival event in New York this June. But three other events formerly produced by Wein and his team live on.

The New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival was run separately and never fell under the Festival Network umbrella. Festival Network's contractual affiliation to produce the Playboy Jazz Festival and Freihofer's Jazz Festival in Saratoga, N.Y. expired last year.

Longtime Festival Productions senior producer Dan Melnick is the producing partner and artistic director of the Freihofer's event at the Saratoga Performing Arts Center on June 27 and 28 through his own company, Absolutely Live Entertainment LLC.

Wein's longtime West Coast affiliate Darlene Chan now produces the Playboy Jazz Festival event at the Hollywood Bowl independently.

Montreal Jazz Festival enhancements

There will be more to celebrate - and enjoy - when the 30th edition of the Festival International de Jazz de Montreal is held July 1 to 12.

The festival, the world's finest - and largest - jazz event, draws more than 2 millon attendees and 3,000 musicians from 30 countries for its 550 concerts (370 of them free outdoor events).

By the time the festival opens, the production organization Equipe Spectra will have opened its own new building that adds a new venue in the festival's downtown site, in and around the Place des Arts. Festival Co-Founder and Artistic Director Andre Menard said that new building, Maison du Festival de Jazz, will house a 350-seat cabaret-style performance hall, restaurant, hall of fame, archives and exhibition space. It will also house the festival's media space.


Co-Founder/Artistic Director Andre Menard, 2008 ... >
Every five years, the festival has added a prestigious new annual award to honor musicians from various genres. This year it is adding the Bruce Lundvall Award to honor the achievement of a non-musician from either the music business or the media. Menard said in Boston this week that the first recipient of that new award will be Bruce Lundvall himself, for his 25 years as president of Blue Note Records and his many other contributions to the industry.

Festival headliners this year include Jeff Beck, blues guitarists Buddy Guy and Susan Tedeschi, pianist Chucho Valdes, singers Melody Gardot, Patricia Barber and Madeleine Peyroux - and many more to be announced later this month.

Newport lives

George Wein wasn't about to let Festival Network LLC's financial woes put an end to the two festivals in Newport, Rhode Island that launched his 55-year run of producing festivals across the United States and around the globe. (See December 31 blog entry for background.)

While it is unclear what will happen to the rest of the festival events that Wein produced before he sold his Festival Productions Inc. operations to a group of investors and young entrepreneurs two years ago, including the JVC Jazz Festivals in New York and elsewhere, Wein had some welcome news today.

He announced that he applied for – and received – a license from the State of Rhode Island to produce a folk festival this July 31 to August 2 and a jazz festival the following weekend, August 7 to 9. This year marks the 50th anniversary of the start of the Newport Folk Festival, and it is 55 years since the jazz festival concept blossomed in Newport in 1954.

The license to put on these two 2009 events going to the Wein production team is not surprising, considering that Festival Network, as of late January, hadn't paid the state the thousands of dollars in usage fees it was due from the 2008 festivals at Fort Adams State Park last August. Other vendors from those weekends were also owed money. Festival Network did pay the $200,000+ owed to the state - due since August - sometime in February. The state subsequently voided its three-year contract with FN because of the late payment. That gave Wein the opportunity to step back into the picture.

"When I was informed that the festivals, which have been the most important part of my life since 1954 and 1959, might be lost forever, I realized that it was necessary for me to come back and apply for the rights to produce jazz and folk festivals in 2009 and beyond," Wein said in a news release. “The traditions we have established (in Newport) mean everything to me."

If you read between the lines, and not very deeply, it sounds like Festival Network has a slim-to-none chance of righting its ship – and slim stayed in port.

Wein and his veteran team are among the best at producing festivals. After all, they pretty much created the mold. It’s a pity that the Festival Network LLC team never took the opportunity to learn from the masters. Rather, they ran the operation into the ground – and doubtless created angst and heartache for this true gentleman of jazz. Fortunately, he persevered.

Stay tuned. We still haven’t heard what may become of the other festivals that became part of the Festival Network LLC operation.

A month of Marco, sort of

Keyboard player Marco Benevento is on the cutting edge of blending modern and classic rock with the art of jazz improvisation, often in an other-worldly sonic atmosphere. The intensity, gorgeous musical palette and his vivid imagination make it something to check out.

Bay Area fans are getting a month (sort of) to do so in a live context, with Benevento performing at Yoshi’s in Oakland, Calif., every Tuesday in February with a different set of special guests each week.

Those of us not on the Left Coast don't need to feel slighted. Benevento’s newest CD Me Not Me is out on his own new label, The Royal Potato Family. In addition to three originals, it includes covers of material ranging from Deerhoof, My Morning Jacket and Leonard Cohen to Beck, George Harrison and Led Zeppelin. His band includes ex-Jacob Fred Jazz Odyssey bassist Reed Mathis, and Andrew Barr and Matt Chamberlain splitting the drum work. Benevento’s sonic arsenal includes piano, Optigan, Mellotron, tack piano and clavinet.

Benevento played a packed side stage at last August’s JVC Newport Jazz Festival, where saxophonist Chris Potter joined the trio for its rousing take on Led Zeppelin’s “Friends” and it is good to see that tune is superbly included here, albeit without sax. Chris Potter sits in with the Marco Benevento Trio, JVC Newport, August 2008 ... >
Me Not Me opens with Jim James’ My Morning Jacket hit “Golden.” As the CD features Leonard Cohen’s “Seems So Long Ago Nancy,” it isn’t surprising to hear Benevento dropping a few most-memorable bars of Cohen’s anthemic “Hallelujah” into his take on “Golden.”

The leader’s own material includes “Now They’re Writing Music,” a rather straight-ahead version of his catchy tune “Mephisto,” and his Beatles-reminiscent “Call Home.”

And what of the music festival scene, Newport and beyond?

Will there be jazz and folk festivals in Newport next summer, and JVC Jazz Festivals elsewhere in the world? If so, who will be producing them? Those are valid questions these days. Questions without firm answers as of this writing.

Dave Brubeck & George Wein, backstage 2006

Two years ago, festival impresario George Wein sold his very successful Festival Productions Inc. to a newcomer on the entertainment scene, Festival Network LLC, for a handsome sum. The new company, which hired Wein and some of his longtime staff as contract employees, had a greater mission beyond merely running the eight JVC-sponsored festivals across the U.S. and around the world and other FPI staples, including the Playboy Jazz Festival in Los Angeles.

The new mission was to also create a series of “destination festivals” in exotic resort locations to lure large numbers of music fans to places like Martha’s Vineyard off Cape Cod or the mountain resort town of Whistler, British Columbia. The theory being – if we build it, they will come. Festival Network also invested in enhanced equipment and amenities for the existing festivals, including the place where Wein started it all in 1954 with the Newport Jazz Festival in coastal Rhode Island.

In the overall scheme of things, spending money willy-nilly on frills in venues new and old, and ignoring the sage advice of Wein’s lower-level staff may have backfired. The high overhead, higher expectations, ever-increasing talent costs and modest-at-best turnouts at its ”destination” events, proved costly in more ways than one.

At the end of 2008, word was out that Festival Network had closed its New York office, either furloughed or laid off employees, and had terminated the contracts of its “contract employees.” Some Newport vendors reported they still are awaiting payment for festival services provided last August. Word was also out that Festival Network’s executives were trying to raise more capital for the company by reaching out to new investors.

What a challenge, given that initial investors may not be thrilled the way their money seemed to go out the door the way water flows down the gutters in a rainstorm. If Festival Network can save itself, it needs to do soon despite the mess in the world economy. It likely will have to scale back on the newer festivals and stick with the tried-and-true festivals that enjoy corporate sponsorship, such as the JVC events in New York, Newport, Los Angeles and Concord, Calif., Chicago, Miami, Paris and The Netherlands (home of the North Sea Jazz Festival), as well as The Newport Folk Festival, which ran in extravagant fashion in 2008 without having a title sponsor.

If Festival Network cannot save itself, one has to believe that George Wein, now 83, will find a way to marshal his loyalists, regain key festival ownership rights, and do his darnedest to make sure the major festivals continue to operate. It is difficult to think otherwise. Music festivals have been in his blood since 1954. Besides, the Newport Folk Festival began in 1959… and there is a 50th anniversary that is ripe for celebration this coming August.