No major, mainstream, corporate-supported jazz fest will occur in New York City this summer, according to today’s New York Times report confirming my posting of April 15.
Festival Network principal Chris Shields, purchaser in 2007 of the production company headed by George Wein which staged June jazz concerts at major mid-town Manhattan venues for 37 years, blames the economy and his own over-ambitious plans for the suspension (if not demise) of events which kept New York the focus of the jazz world, first with name sponsorship from Newport and Kool cigarettes and for 24 years as the JVC Jazz Festival-New York. The NY jazz fest was one of a baker’s dozen jazz fests supported throughout the U.S. each summer by JVC-America. The company says it is “has chosen to take our promotional activities in a different direction,
and one that will no longer include jazz event sponsorship.”