No Doom and Gloom here!
Jazzfest 2006: Bigger and better than ever
By Keith Spera
Music writer
Organizers of the 2006 New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival intend to put on what they describe as a world-class event at the Fair Grounds beginning on its traditional weekend in April.
Unlike plans announced this week for a scaled down Mardi Gras, Jazzfest officials say their intention is the opposite: to stage a festival that is bigger and better than ever, and one that will help to reignite tourism in the Crescent City.
“The goal is, unanimously, to try and hold a major Jazzfest here,” said David Oestreicher, president of Jazzfest’s governing board. “One that hopefully will be a world-shaking event . . . We think that we will be the watershed event that will jump-start the tourist economy for this part of the world.”
The board of the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival and Foundation, the non-profit group that owns Jazzfest, met Thursday for the first time since Hurricane Katrina with Quint Davis, whose Festival Productions Inc.-New Orleans produces the event.
Also present at the board’s North Rampart Street offices were representatives of AEG Live, the entertainment conglomerate that co-produced the 2005 Jazzfest, and Churchill Downs Inc., the Louisville-based company that bought the Fair Grounds in 2004.
They emerged with an ambitious plan: to stage the 2006 Jazzfest in its traditional season and at its traditional home at the Fair Grounds.
“The foundation is dedicated to seeing that this is the best Jazzfest ever,” said Don Marshall, executive director of the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival and Foundation. “Our intentions are to make sure that it is on the same scale (as 2005), if not larger.”
Organizers hope to announce definite plans for Jazzfest ’06 by mid-December.
“There are some ifs,” Oestreicher said. “We are vigorously addressing the logistical problems. I couldn’t be more positive.”
Louis Edwards, an associate producer at Festival Productions Inc. (FPI), said that Churchill Downs’ purchase of the Fair Grounds and FPI’s partnership with AEG Live, the nation’s second-highest grossing concert promoter, may drive Jazzfest’s post-Katrina comeback.
“Churchill Downs can make some things happen that might have been more difficult for a smaller team,” Edwards said. “The same with AEG. The might of a large entertainment organization is standing side by side with us and looking at all the challenges. We get the benefit of the analysis of an organization that produces events worldwide. They want to do everything they can to make it happen.”
Organizers face monumental challenges, from hotel rooms to infrastructure to marketing to locating musicians, Mardi Gras Indians, social aid and pleasure club grand marshals and artists scattered around the country. Unlike years past, the festival may need to transport and house even local musicians.
“Usually people are at their houses in eastern New Orleans or Gentilly, then drive in to the Fair Grounds and do their thing,” Edwards said. “That’s not going to be possible.”
“The musicians who make up the heart and soul of the festival are no longer in the neighborhoods here,” Marshall said. “So we’re going to be responsible for getting them back here. The additional expense is going to be significant. But we’re committed to that. This festival will probably be the biggest homecoming of New Orleans musicians.”
Jazzfest diehards are also widely dispersed.
“We don’t know where our audience is right now,” Marshall said. “The Jazzfest lovers who have been going for 30-some years who lived in Mid-City and had their best friends from the East Coast come spend a weekend and sleep on the floor . . . that may not be happening. We need to do as much as we can to have New Orleanians return.”
The likes of Elton John, Simon & Garfunkel and the Rolling Stones have performed at Katrina benefits or donated money to relief efforts. Such marquee artists may be invited to perform at Jazzfest.
“Our No. 1 commitment is to New Orleans and Louisiana musicians,” Marshall said. “But I think we’ll see some new faces at the festival. There were some wonderful collaborations taking place over the last couple of months, and hopefully those can be built upon. The programming potential is phenomenal.”
“There are names that have been mentioned (for Jazzfest) that could raise us to heights undreamed of,” Oestreicher said.
Under normal circumstances, Jazzfest would have already booked many of its headliners by early November. No acts are locked down for 2006 yet.
Davis and his FPI team reoccupied their downtown offices just last week, but they had already begun reestablishing contact with displaced musicians. Many appeared at the Sept. 20 benefit called “From the Big Apple to the Big Easy,” which Davis co-produced at New York’s Madison Square Garden.
All involved in Jazzfest profess a new sense of purpose.
“Jazzfest always makes a powerful statement about the vitality of New Orleans culture,” Edwards said. “We realize that more than ever before, what happens with the festival will be a comment on the state of New Orleans culture post-Katrina.
“With that in mind, we’re focused and working as hard as we ever have to make the festival a reality.”
Music writer Keith Spera can be reached at
kspera@timespicayune.com, or (504)¤826-3470.
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