George Wein

CareFusion drops jazz fest sponsorships

CareFusion, a global corp. specializing in hospital equipment, has ended its two-year sponsorship of George Wein’s New York Jazz Festival and Newport Jazz Festival, and the Chicago Jazz Festival, a day after reporting the retirement of its Chairman and CEO David L. Schlotterbeck, and the first quarter financials of its 2010 fiscal year.

The company announced steep revenue losses and plans to cut 5% of its workforce last August; in October, CareFusion recalled 17,000 Alaris PC infusion units, cited by the FDA as a product the use of which has “a reasonable probability” of causing “serious adverse health consequences or death.” But a publicist cautioned against linking these happenstances, and enthused about what she called CareFusion’s jazz-related marketing campaign.

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Mr. Teachout gets the word: Jazz’s Swing Era popularity past

Biographer of H L. Mencken and (coming soon) Louis Armstrong, ArtsJournal blogger and scribe for the Wall Street Journal Terry Teachout has raised a fussÂ by pointing to the National Endowment for the Arts‘Â study citing declines in jazz audiences from 2002 to 2008 (and indeed from 1982 to 2008). That this data was released in June and been reported on earlier, elsewhere, (likeÂ at Jazz.com by editor Ted Gioia) without getting much attention suggests either the broad reach and high profile ofÂ Murdock-owned media or it’s August and a writer getting outraged about ho-hum “news” can stir otherwise becalmed straits.Â

But seriously: Mr. Teachout has stumbled into a very old trap, forecasting the death of jazz.

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Jazz health, bright moments

All is not dismal in Jazzville: Producer George Wein has found a title sponsor — CareFusion — for his jazz festivals in Newport next month and New York City summer 2010. SFJazz has announced a stellar lineup including Ornette Coleman for its fall fest, Oct. 10 – Nov. 21.Â

As Mitch Myers reports from the 13-day 30th annual Festival International de Jazz de Montreal, diversity, provided by living legends and genuinely engaging younger talents, is the key. As James Hale reportedÂ from the just ended 11-day-long Ottawa Jazz Festival (as which he worked as a media consultant), “the personalities behind the music are as strong and creative as ever.”

So are festivals the future — or just the present — of jazz?

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In lieu of JVC Jazz festivals

Did you miss the “festivity” of June jazz concerts in major Manhattan venues — or did you find ways of coping without them? There’s so much fine music — jazz and beyond — in nearby festive settings, many of them out-of-doors, that the absence of a 38-year-old institution doesn’t seem to have made much stir. Perhaps you didn’t even notice?Â

Here’sÂ my most recent City Arts – NYC report on how George Wein responded to his perennial presence in New York City’s jazz summer being suspended, upcoming classic jazz alternatives in Kent, CT, Katonah NY and Tanglewood, MA — plus notes on promising “world music” events coming up free in Central Park, Battery Park, Prospect Park and the late AugustÂ Charlie Parker fest, uptown and downtown.

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Domino effect of JVC Jazz Fest failure on Jazz Times?

New speculation on the jazz magazine crisis: Having no summer advertorial supplements for JVC Jazz Festivals (which aren’t happening) may have hugely hurt JT‘s seasonal revenues. How could the loss of three consecutive monthly multi-page inserts, all expenses paid for by the client, not shake a publication’s income stream?

Complete disclosure: I edited the JVC Jazz Festival program books in the 1990s, when they were inserts into Tower Records’ free monthly magazine Pulse!, and for a year when JVC America, responsible for the Japanese owned electronics firms’ promotional investment in George Wein’s international jazz fests, switched the contract to Jazziz. Ah, those were the days!

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JVC Jazz Fest-NY cancellation reported

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.”

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Vision Festival, NYC’s sole surviving summer jazz big bang

With no news confirming — or denying — that there will be a mainstream New York City jazz festival next summer like those produced by George Wein since the late ’60s and for the past 25 years supported by the JVC Corporation of America, the artist-organized “avant-jazz”Â Vision Festival stands as the largest and longest concentrated such effort in the city this year, having just released its completeÂ scheduleÂ of concerts and panels to be held at the downtown Abrons Arts Center and Angel Orenzanz FoundationÂ June 9 – 15, 2009.

Wein by comparison — and disassociated with Festival Network, to whom he sold his former Fetival Productions company two years ago — has announced he’ll present singer-pianist Diana Krall at Carnegie Hall June 23 and 24 (in celebration ofÂ Quiet Nights,Â her recently released,Â string-drenched,Â chart-toppingÂ album of broken-hearted love songs) and stage jazz and folk fests in Newport, Rhode Island, where he established the successful format for summer vernacular music fests 55 years ago.

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Wein’s jazz fest without JVC Corp

Calling all jazz sponsors: that’s the message producer George Wein released today (March 17) in search of corporate support for his proposed 55th anniversary Newport Jazz Festival.

So doing, Wein also announced the end of a 24-year association with JVC Corp., the electronics manufacturer that has been title sponsor of fests formerly staged by Wein’s company Festival Productions in New York, Chicago, LA, Concord CA, Miami and Paris.Â If JVC has pulled out of sponsoring jazz fests — and not just disassociating with Wein — the effect will be widespread.Â No details on any of these events happening in 2009 have yet surfaced, although Holland’s North Sea Jazz Festival 2009Â website still bears a JVC sponsor logo.

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George Wein to produce Newport jazz & folk fests

George Wein will celebrate the 55th anniversary of the historicÂ Newport Jazz Festival and the 50th anniversary of his equally renown Newport Folk Festival by producing both a jazz fest and a folk fest in that Rhode Island resort town next August, according to a press release issued on March 3 by publicist Carolyn McClair — but perhaps without his sponsor of 25 years and independent of the company he helped establish just two years ago.

Wein, age 83, a pianistÂ and memoiristÂ as well as impresario, has put on jazz and folk fests in Newport, and an array of other jazz fests across the U.S. and in Europe, with sponsorship of JVC U.S.A., a division of the audio and video gear manufacturer owned by Victor Company of Japan for 25 years (prior to that the fests had other corporate sponsors). But the press release makes no mention of JVC or of the Festival Network, LLC, the company that resulted from Wein’s merger of his Festival Productions with Shoreline Media in 2007, now reportedÂ to be in deep financial distress.

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