The Portland Jazz Festival’s news conference yesterday yielded no information about performers for the revived festival. A pledge of major support from Alaska Airlines on Tuesday brought the festival back from the dead. The demise of the event was announced in early September, but Alaska Air came zooming in “out of the blue,” as artistic director Bill Royston put it, to resuscitate the festival.
At the news conference, festival officials did not name headliners or other musicians for the festival, which is restored to its original dates, February 13-22, 2009. No time was set for the roster to be put in place. Royston’s festival co-founder Sarah Bailen Smith said, “We are putting on our track shoes. We are contacting our landlord, insurance company, all the artists and agents in New York and artists across the world.”
The bailout is a big enough municipal deal in Portland that The Oregonian has an editorial about it in this morning’s edition.