News | Sunday, 08 February 2009

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Jazz crowd’s delight as festival returns to Arts Council

DAVID DARMANIN bears the news that the Malta Jazz Festival is to finally, after three years of its commercial farming-out, return into the State’s hands.

Jazz musicians and keen followers of the scene are “overjoyed” at government’s decision to take back in its hands the organisation of Malta’s Jazz Festival.
For the past three years, the festival – a mainstay of the island’s programme of summer events – was outsourced to promoters NnG, a decision taken by the former tourism and culture minister Francis Zammit Dimech.
The decision to farm out what was a loss-making event caused heated debate over the years as jazz enthusiasts argued that the festival had lost its charm.
With top jazz musicians costing too much, and dwindling audiences making the government-sponsored event too costly to organise, in 2005 the event was farmed out.
Once boasting a line-up of top-notch jazz artists like Al Di Meola, Diana Krall and Chick Corea and progressive acts like the Alan Parsons Project, the so called ‘jazz festival’ was actually renamed Malta Jazz and Rock Festival in 2008, in a bid to secure more crowd-pulling acts.
The Malta Council for Culture and Arts (MCCA) will now soon be announcing their chosen artistic director for the Malta Jazz Festival. The budget allocated for the event still remains to be announced.
Contacted in Paris, jazz bassist Oliver Degabriele, who a few years ago moved to France in pursuit of a musical career, said that when he heard about government’s decision to take back the organisation of the event, he was “obviously overjoyed.”
“I had been one of the first to write in the newspapers, protesting against the choice of ‘selling’ the jazz festival and unfortunately all that I thought would happen, did,” he said.
“Malta will have once again a festival with an intelligent artistic direction… the jazz festival will have once again an educational role which was sorely overlooked when it was given over to NnG three years ago.”
Degabriele also stressed that the aim of such an event “should never be about turnover and profit, but to host three days of high quality music which can entertain, excite and motivate people of all tastes to delve into new music.”
On his part, the GRTU President for hospitality and entertainment Philip Fenech, who has made a tradition of hosting the jazz festival’s musicians at his Paceville establishment, said: “Before the organisation of the jazz festival went private, the event enjoyed extreme prestige in the international jazz market because the musicians it hosted were of top quality.”
Ironically, Fenech, who is now also a director on the main board of the MTA, had agreed with the idea of farming out the jazz festival to the private sector. “I had been querying the possibility of giving out its organisation to a private company for a long time,” he said.
“It must be said that the package that was offered was hard to match. The Malta Jazz Festival hosted the best musicians, in a very picturesque setting and charged very reasonable prices. It’s enough to say that Al Di Meola had himself told us that playing in Malta was like playing in a postcard. However, when the jazz festival was organised by government, there was never a proper marketing plan. Marketing the event was not even considered at the time.”
Fenech added that the attempt to find a balance between jazz and rock over the past years “did not work as the jazz crowd was completely lost and rock enthusiasts were not attracted to the jazz setup.”
Reacting to the news, local jazz singer Francesca Galea also said she was “overjoyed”. Referring to the way the event was organised in the past years, Galea said: “We can’t really call that a jazz festival can we?”
“At least yet again, there’s something to look forward to each summer on this island,” she added. “It really means a lot as I know that the jazz festival can help inspire local musicians to get into jazz, especially when considering that our local jazz circle is very limited.”
Jazz drummer Jason Paul Fabri shares the same enthusiasm. “In a time when life in Malta appears to be facing incredible challenges from all angles, news about the Jazz Festival returning to what it was all about, jazz, is more than welcome news,” Fabri said. “I can’t wait to listen to the first performance.”
Guitarist Eric Santucci was more diplomatic. “I am fully confident in NnG’s ability to organise rock events,” he claimed. “I, for one, being a musician who enjoys and appreciates these styles too, am very grateful for NnG’s contribution in this area and wish to continue attending such concerts as I have done, as long as progressive rock and other styles are not presented to me as jazz.”
Jazz trumpeter Effie Azzopardi pointed out that by 2004 “the organisation of the jazz festival needed new blood as it seemed to me at the time that the enthusiasm was dwindling. However, when NnG took over, the jazz festival turned into a music festival. They also changed the venue. I very much prefer Lascaris Wharf to the Valletta Waterfont, since the former setup permits the setting up of a barge for a side stage, thus presenting the possibility to host lesser known acts.
“The main question now is feasibility, although when you see the money spent on the Eurovision passing away as investment in publicity, I do not think it is hard to justify money spent on the Jazz Festival.”
Reacting to the flak, NnG Promotions director Nigel Camilleri told MaltaToday: “It’s easy to criticise, but at the time we took the contract the bottom line was that the jazz festival was not going to happen anymore. It had to either change in the way we did it or it would have died a natural death.
“Personally, I am also very happy about it going back to how it was, as I used to enjoy attending before we took over its organisation. But when I organised the event, government never gave NnG any grants. The way we did it was the only way it could be done on a commercial basis. We must also point out that the Jazz Festival was never mine – I simply organised it on behalf of the government. So when we changed the name to Malta Jazz and Rock Festival I was simply following orders.”

ddarmanin@mediatoday.com.mt

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