The demise of the Portland Jazz Festival was announced today by press release from its membership umbrella organization PDX Jazz, cancelling plans for February 2009 due to the pullout by title sponsor Qwest Communications. Despite concerted attempts by festival producer Bill Royston, no other funder stepped up to support the five-year-old festival’s modest budget with high returns, and the result may be due to the U.S.’s overall economic downturn.
The festival — two weeks every February starting in 2004 — filled burgeoning Portland’s boutique hotels, restaurants, wine bars, beer halls and coffee shops with local and regional fans. They came to hear headliners including Ornette Coleman, Cecil Taylor, the SF Jazz Collective, the Bad Plus, Chick Corea and Gary Burton, Charles Lloyd and other impressive artists, along with panel discussions (which last year I helped plan) and enrichment events hosted by Portland State University, among other area institutions.Â
As produced by Royston and a small, efficient staff, the Portland Jazz Festival put this city of just over half-a-million on the international jazz map. Its ticketed and free concerts held at venues ranging from restored movie theaters to hotel ballrooms to local bars was accounted a success by enthusiastic audiences, gratified musicians and professional critics brought in from the East Coast and Canada to observe and interact with middle-aged devotees and a rising young crowd.