A common complaint at "Jazz" (sic) Festivals

[Tenor Freak]

The broadcaster Nicole Sweeney recently posted this on Twitter. I thought it would resonate with Bordees, particularly Ian, given his experiences at Vienne over the years.

https://x.com/TheVelvetVoyce/status/1795542732133290115

Okay. I'm gonna say this and I'm ready for ALL the smoke. He's headlining every #Jazz festival around these days...on stages that men and women who play this shit for REAL ain't even been on. For. THIS?!?!

"He" is Andre 3000, the rapper from Outkast who is now performing his own brand of improvisation. He seems to be reaching for a Yusef Lateef/Rahsaan/Dewey Redman kind of sound but frankly hasn't the chops yet. From the clip it seems the PA wasn't terribly good as you can only hear his musette/double reed(?) noodlings. Not great, Bob.

Clip here: https://x.com/SKTheKingYT/status/1795508612254609818

It seems to have disappointed not only the jazzers in the audience, but also the other punters who had seemingly come hoping to hear some hip hop.

[Ian Thumwood]

Bruce

Apologies for not being around much of late as I am trying to arrange my wedding so have been occupied most evenings since my fiancee moved in.

I will not be around for Vienne this year and have mot been since 2019. The pandemic caused one festival to be abandoned and the following year scaled back to allow French nationals only. Since things have returned to normal, the festival Vienne became more commercial. I regret not knowing about it earlier as there were some serious artists performing in the 1990s which continued into 2010 when the running of the festival was taken away from the original team who had established it. Afterwards, I had the impression that the new team did not really understand jazz.

When I first visited, the audience were extremely savvy. There was a genuine sense of the audience being made up of discerning jazz fans. I am not sure this is still the case. The one thing I loved about the festival was the you could discuss jazz with most people and have really informed conversation. It was like a live version of the board. There increasingly became a disconnect with the audience which seemed to see genuine fans alienated. I loved hanging out with the French musicians and fans as I could practice my French but also appreciate that some people were extremely informed about jazz. In the later years, it became apparent that the younger audience members were looking for something different and did not share the same values. Two conversations stick out fir me. I spoke to French pianist who was sniffy about the current generation of fans not really appreciating what jazz was about and citing the case that they had no idea who Phineas Newborn was and were too keen to laud contemporary players who were not so good. The last year I went I had a beer with two 30 something French lads who were good company but who had gone ro the festival specifically to hear a set by a French saxophonist performing with a dj.

I do not consider myself to be old but I do feel that festivals are catering for a younger and less demanding audience than may have been the case twenty years ago. Many of the musicians I saw at Vienne such as Wayne Shorter, Oscar Peterson (and also Lucky Peterson! ) , McCoy Tyner , Ornette Coleman , B B King , etc have now passed on and there are probably fewer than 20 jazz musicians these days who would be considered major names in the music. One of rhe last major adventurous gigs I saw at Vienne was an evening of a pool of musicians playing John Zorn 's music. I think he is now about 70 !

The evening sessions in the club increasingly became the refuge of jazz fans looking for the New, innovative and more genuine jazz artists. This became the main appeal for me but the line up in the club this year was very underwhelming. It was usually where you could make discoveries too.