Quotes of the Day
The Umbrian capital of Perugia is never more glorious than on a long summer evening when its medieval streets are filled with the sound of jazz. After a day devoted to touring, swimming or an extremely long lunch, there's nothing like settling into Perugia's Arena Santa Giuliana to hear the endlessly inventive saxophonist Sonny Rollins deconstruct the melody of, say, Thelonious Monk's Crepuscule with Nellie — in just the kind of magical twilight that might have inspired it.
Monk's angular ballad could tumble out of Rollins' horn on July 17, when the star headlines the Umbria Jazz Festival. If it does, it'll be just one of the perfect, spontaneous moments dazzling jazz fans as Europe's summer festival season kicks off. Though jazz today lacks megastars like Miles Davis — who could draw big audiences and then disdainfully play with his back to them — there are more festivals in Europe than ever: an estimated 1,500 a year, according to Munich business consultant and jazz fan Peter Leimgruber. Some are small and resolutely pure, others gigantic, with programs full of rock and lite-jazz artists who make aficionados wonder why the promoters still call them jazz festivals. While Europe's love for improvised music remains strong, the festival business is getting tougher as competition stiffens, artists' fees rise, and government subsidies fade. Is this all too much of a good thing?
Jan Ole Otnes, the director of Europe's oldest jazz fest — the Molde Jazz Festival, in Norway — thinks it is. Just 10 years ago there were only four summer jazz festivals in the country; now there are more than a dozen, and Otnes says "a lot of them have lost their special character." Not his, of course: from July 14 to 19, singer Dianne Reeves, bassist Dave Holland, saxophonist Michael Brecker and a slew of artists from Norway's fertile jazz scene will descend on the small town on the North Atlantic, one of Europe's most serene spots for jazz.
Special character? The tiny French village of Marciac, just north of the Spanish border, has it in spades. And the Marciac Jazz Festival's director, Jean-Louis Guilhaumon, has made jazz into a true local industry in a region that's been losing jobs and population for decades. When the French Ministry of Education threatened last month to move Guilhaumon, a school principal who has fostered an ambitious jazz-education program in the village for decades, his supporters recruited the likes of trumpeter Wynton Marsalis to take up his cause. The ministry wisely decided last week he could stay put.
Guilhaumon and Marciac will celebrate his reprieve in style. This year's festival (Aug. 1-15) has some of the biggest names in jazz, starting with pianist Oscar Peterson, one of the last of the great generation of classic jazz artists, as well as Marsalis, Pat Metheny and Diana Krall, the Canadian singer-pianist who is jazz's hottest property right now. With a lineup like that, it's no wonder the Marciac festival generates 75% of its €2.5 million budget from ticket sales. Not everyone can pull that off: in Bayonne in the French Basque Country, this year's jazz festival was canceled after local authorities cut their subsidies and other sponsorship dried up.
That has become a familiar problem. Iñaki Añua, director of the Vitoria Jazz Festival in Spain's Basque Country (July 15-18), lost his sponsorship with Heineken after five years, and says he has to scramble to see what he can arrange for next. "I've heard the same thing from other festivals," he says. "We get a million people coming here for jazz, but the sponsors seem to be moving more and more to sports events."
Whatever the logic of the sponsors, jazz remains a tiny but relatively healthy segment of a music industry in general turmoil. Wulf Mueller, vice president for international marketing at Universal Music International, which owns the prestigious Verve label, says his group's jazz sales rose 29% over the past two years, while Universal's overall record sales dropped off 20%. "Jazz doesn't get pirated much, its audience is a little older and a little wealthier, and they like to own things," he says. "The demand for quality music is strong."
In search of more than a niche market, some organizers have broadened out their offerings. "Jazz festivals these days aren't as much about jazz as they are about quality music," says Fritz Thom, whose Vienna Jazz Festival (June 23-July 13) first took root when pianist Keith Jarrett played the Staatsoper in 1991. "We're an urban festival, and we need a broad spectrum, from mainstream to avant garde," says Thom, whose offerings this year include pianist Chick Corea and New Orleans legend Dr. John.
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Purists have long since written off the most famous of European festivals, the Montreux Jazz Festival (July 4-19), but the crowds who flock there don't care. As founder Claude Nobs cheerfully acknowledges, "I'm the traitor who crossed the line first." It was in Montreux 32 years ago that the Casino burned down during a Frank Zappa concert, inspiring Deep Purple's rock classic Smoke on the Water. "I feel a little bad to be called a jazz festival, but it's our tattoo, we can't change it," says Nobs, who was immortalized in the Purple anthem. ("Funky Claude was running in and out/ Pulling kids out of the ground.") Artists like Jacky Terrasson, Cassandra Wilson and Charles Lloyd will play the Casino, but the big acts in Montreux's main auditorium include Van Morrison, Radiohead and Craig David. It doesn't bother Nobs, who points out that an evening of light jazz from Natalie Cole and George Benson sold out as quickly as Radiohead did.
For a concentrated dose of music, nothing quite matches the North Sea Jazz Festival (July 11-13), which packs around 250 acts into one weekend in The Hague. "You make your own festival," says director Theo van den Hoek. Visitors can go pure with Chicago's spectacular pianist-singer Patricia Barber and trumpeter Dave Douglas, or leaven tradition with deep house, like Norwegian Bugge Wesseltoft, or with klezmer, like John Zorn's Electric Masada. If that's all too demanding, no problem: a full weekend's schedule can be crafted with the likes of Bonnie Raitt, Steve Winwood and Solomon Burke. No one's keeping score; the idea is to keep the beat.
- JAMES GRAFF | Paris
- The best thing about July: Europe's jazz festivals take off