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The Calgary Jazz Festival is returning to its roots this year, according to Pat Maiani, the festival’s director. The festival began as a free “home-grown” celebration at Prince’s Island Park with a handful of local bands. Thirty years later, Maiani says the emphasis has returned to free local entertainment, with stages at Olympic Plaza complementing the roster of international jazz heavyweights.
“We want to be the greatest jazz festival in the world,” Maiani says. “It’s a combination of recognizing the local guys and bringing in the greatest musicians from around the world. We’ve learned from mistakes in the past and we’ll always recognize the local guys.”
Over the years, the festival has faced financial problems, internal squabbles and has folded twice, only to be rescued by the Edmonton Jazz Society in 1998 and then by C-Jazz in 2006, who which is currently producing the festival. But past and present organizers see a bright future for the current incarnation of the festival.
“With Pat Maiani we have that single, dedicated, crazed individual whose mission in life is for there to be a great jazz festival in Calgary,” says John Reid, former president of the Jazz Calgary Society, who started the festival and ran it though the ’80s.
TEXT BREAKER: HUMBLE BEGINNINGS
Alberta was celebrating its 75th anniversary in 1980 when the provincial government gave Edmonton $100,000 to organize an international jazz festival, which continued for years as the Jazz City Festival. Reid was inspired to apply for a grant to start a Calgary festival.
The Jazz Calgary Society built on the history of Canada Day jazz jams in Prince’s Island Park, and with a half-dozen local bands, just enough money from the provincial government to pay artist fees, and 3,000 audience members, the Calgary Jazz Festival was born.
It was so successful the Jazz Calgary Society decided to hold another festival. And another. And another….
“The problem was that in the first year, we had a grant to do a big luxurious one-day thing with all the bells and whistles,” Reid says “The second year we tried to do something bigger, but we didn’t have the money. So it was kind of a struggle for the first number of years.”
Still, the society kept expanding the scope of the jazz festival through the 1980s, gradually getting more funding from the city and province, attracting larger audiences and securing the sponsorship of the Calgary Centre for the Performing Arts (now the Epcor Centre). By the end of the ’80s, the festival had morphed into the 10-day Calgary International Jazz Festival.
“Somewhere in the late ’80s, we started counting the countries that were involved,” Reid says. “There was Canada and the States, an African group from Ghana, a band from Denmark.…”
The festival included big names like Joe Zawinul of Weather Report fame, Latin sensation Tito Puente, blues legend Buddy Guy and Sun Ra and his Solar Arkestra. “That was a goal I had set in my mind as a jazz presenter,” Reid says, “To someday present Sun Ra, the Duke Ellington of avant-garde modern jazz.”
Maiani still regrets missing the Sun Ra show, but says a festival show by Ken Vandermark and the AALY trio changed his life. “It was free jazz and stuff I never thought I’d like, but the energy and the performance were incredible.”
TEXT BREAKER: THE FIRST COLLAPSE
Lesley Beaupré succeeded Reid when he stepped down from the festival board in the early ’90s due to family commitments. By 1998, under a heavy debt-load caused by lack of sponsorship, low ticket sales and expensive, big-name artists, the Calgary International Jazz Festival Society folded and Westcan Jazz, an umbrella organization of jazz festivals in Edmonton, Vancouver, Victoria and Saskatoon, took over the festival.
“It’s as simple as expenses exceeding revenues, “ Reid says. “You put on Pat Metheny in the Jubilee Auditorium and it’s a big show and it just didn’t get the ticket sales. It just kind of snowballs and then the tent collapses.”
For almost a decade, Calgary’s jazz festival was run by Westcan through Marc Vasey, the organizer of Edmonton’s Jazz City Festival. People were unhappy that the festival was being run from Edmonton and conspiracy theories abounded about how Westcan engineered the demise of Calgary’s festival by calling for deposits on artist fees well in advance of booking.
“I don’t think anyone in Calgary was very thrilled to see the Edmonton jazz festival take over the Calgary jazz festival,” Reid says. “Was it a conspiracy? I don’t know. I have my private opinions on these things, but I don’t think there is evidence to say that Marc tried to engineer the downfall of the Calgary jazz festival so he could take it over.”
Frustration over lack of recognition in the Calgary International Jazz Festival led C-Jazz, a group of local musicians, to start a competing festival in September of 2001, which focused on showcasing local talent.
TEXT BREAKER: RISING FROM THE ASHES (AGAIN)
Despite being run from 300 km away, things looked promising for the Calgary International Jazz Festival in the early 2000s. Lineups included names such as Joshua Redman, Herbie Hancock, Medeski, Martin and Wood and Mike Stern. Ticket sales were reported to be strong and TD Canada Trust was secured as the title sponsor.
In 2006, though, it was abruptly announced that the festival wouldn’t go ahead, barely a month before it was set to open. “There was just a blanket e-mail sent out that said it wasn’t happening,” Maiani says. Officially, it was due to lack of funding and unexpected demands by creditors, but many people believed it was due to mismanagement by Vasey.
“There were a lot of cracks on the organizational and financial side,” Maiani says. “The bookkeeping wasn’t being kept up like it should for an organization that size. We were not totally surprised that it happened, just when and how it happened.”
There were also serious disputes over money with Calgary’s core jazz venues, such as Kaos and the Beat Niq. “We did events with [Vasey] and they didn’t pay us, or they would change the terms of the agreement,” says Gerry Hebert, who books shows for the Beat Niq, which nearly went under because of unpaid debt.
Shortly after the cancellation, C-Jazz started getting calls from artists who had booked flights and hotels and were looking for any venue to play in. In just five weeks, C-Jazz got the Beat Niq and other venues involved and managed to pull off the festival. “There was so much support for keeping the festival alive, we got help wherever we turned,” Maiani says.
Now, the festival keeps growing. According to Maiani, the budget has doubled every year, because the demand for jazz in Calgary keeps growing. “We’re going through a resurgence in the popularity of jazz,” he says. “There was a time in the ’70s that people wouldn’t go out to a bar if there wasn’t live music. Maybe it’s wishful thinking, but I think we’re going back to that, maybe.”
There are still challenges, especially renewing the confidence of sponsors, but looking at this year’s lineup, it’s easy to see why Maiani has high hopes for a reborn festival.
Legendary figure such as James Cotton and Mose Allison on the same stage; Alan Tousaint, the composer, producer, singer and pianist who shaped the sound of funk and R&B; the ever-innovative organ trio of Medeski, Martin and Wood; the critically acclaimed Monterey Quartet; Grammy award-winning saxophonist Branford Marsalis; Joyce, described by Maiani as “The Ella of Brazil;” Brecker Brothers guitarist John Abercrombie. On top of the ticketed shows, this year the festival will be offering a “free introductory offer to the world of jazz” at Olympic Plaza, featuring local heavyweights such as Simon Fisk, PJ Perry, Urban Divide, and Quintetto, in the hopes of attracting new jazz fans.
“My biggest problem is being able to see it all,” Maiani says.
Comments: 1
bequia wrote:
Dear Fast Forward,
I am writing in response to an article ‘Your Roots are Showing’ in your June 18 issue Thirty years of the Calgary International Jazz Festival was indeed well worth celebrating, a time for back slapping, self congratulation and loud applause. As the festival’s producer for six of those years I too was ready to smile but that was quickly wiped off my face when I found myself given name-only mention between John Reid stepping down in the early 90s and the festival’s collapse from a heavy debt load a few years later. In the interests of good journalism may I fill in a few gaps and correct what your reporter obviously but erroneously implied.
In the fall of 1990 I stepped out of my role of volunteer coordinator to assume direction of a Calgary Jazz Festival on the brink of failure. I was indeed one of those dedicated crazed individuals, willing to try reviving this event in the face of wrathful creditors, disappointed sponsors and an apathetic public. A true labour of love that six years later was proven worthwhile, for the show, undeniably, went on. The 1996 event with a budget of $1/3million involved more than 300 musicians in 105 performances on 17 different stages over a 10 day period. Paid attendance and box office revenues had more than tripled since 1990 and the large deficit accrued by the previous administration had finally been eliminated. Musically, the festival had truly lived up to its new mandate of ‘celebrating artistic excellence’.
‘My’ festival was not, as you report, about expensive big name artists (Metheny? not my gig), low ticket sales nor expenses exceeding revenues. Rather it was a fiscally responsible festival carefully following a long-range plan to steadily build audiences for what was then truly a minority’s music; small venues, not the Jubilee, were part of the strategy. It was about going to the 300-and-something seat Uptown Stage to get up close and personal with the sounds of Diana Krall, Phil Woods, Bill Frisell, John McLaughlin, McCoy Tyner, with the music of J.J. Johnson, Debbie Harry, Joe Lovano, Randy Weston, (the list does go on...). It was about dancing with the Mahotella Queens, with Maceo Parker, about hard-driving blues and get-down rocking gospel, and it was about the Jazz Club
It was a festival that elevated creative Canadian musicians from bleak outdoor stages to their rightful celebrated place as their ‘Coast to Coast’ series became a cornerstone of the festival and its late night jam sessions the day’s high. From the first night at Cover to Cover in 1991 when Salif Keita’s rhythm section and a Liverpool street band came to jam with west coast gypsies, through the smoking intensity of that too short-lived epitome of jazz club ‘la Cueva,’ to 1996, two in the morning and Hugh Fraser driving the beat at Kaos Café, great Jazz truly happened.
In the spirit of what jazz is, it was a festival that took chances when it dared to introduce Calgary to the extremes of jazz on the avant garde fringe by the likes of Medeski, Vandermark, Minton, Moholo, by the brilliant Dutch improvisers and London Jazz Composers. In the same spirit of jazz it dared to have a crazy side too – to present a Minnie Mouse play, commission a work for 100 saxophones, to present an alphorn quartet and to think ‘The Screaming Headless Torsos’ was a great name for a jazz group! And of course not everything was perfect and often, as festival director, I had to be the best improviser of them all. But overall, it worked. In 1996 the Calgary Herald’s entertainment editor wrote ‘The festival has thrived under Beaupre’s leadership and is now established as one of the major cultural events that Calgary has to offer…it is easily the most ambitious, exciting and musically challenging festival in Calgary’.
When I stepped down after the 1996 event I was proud to have raised the festival through its difficult teen years, proud to be leaving behind a healthy, respected festival with an audience that wanted more. I left behind volumes of archival and resource material (discarded) and an offer (declined) to be part of a transition team. I left a festival with a solid volunteer base that included some of the best people I’ve had the pleasure to know. I left a festival that, with the input of new energy, was ready to take its logical next step towards major corporate sponsorships. I left meticulously audited financial reports and, especially, money in the bank.
What happened next is not my story to tell, but no one was sadder than I to learn of the festival’s rapid decline over the next two years. I was saddened, too, and outraged to hear the far-reaching and libellous allegations that I had been in part responsible for its demise. That your version of the festival’s history implies the same tells me I should have spoken out long ago; I hope that you now allow me, in print, to remedy that error. And allow me too, from this land of ‘don’t worry, be happy’ and no imminent threat of winter to offer sincere heart-felt congratulations to Mr Maiani for keeping the faith and recreating a brilliant festival. Well done.
Lesley Beaupre, Bequia, West Indies
on Feb 2nd, 2011 at 8:17pm Report Abuse
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