Calgary Jazz Fest 2010 Cancelled: What Went Wrong?

The Calgary artistic community and music lovers alike were sent reeling this weekend when it was revealed by numerous media sources that the 2010 Calgary Jazz Festival had been cancelled. Set to kick off today, the festival has been for years one of the highlights of Calgary's summer music scene.

CBC News Calgary reported that C-Jazz (The Calgary Jazz Association) president Richard Sherry said the "decision to cancel the festival followed an in-depth examination of all its financial aspects." Apparently, C-Jazz executive director Patrick Maiani had not been able to produce the audit until Saturday, at which point festival organizers had a six-hour meeting and determined there was simply no way the Calgary Jazz Festival could turn a profit in 2010.

Sherry also told the Calgary Herald, "last year was a 'terrible year' for the jazz festival that left the association, a non-profit organization, with a significant deficit." Instead of attempting a scaled-down event from the start, organizers seemed to over-extend themselves, booking a litany of acts until it was far too late to size the Jazz Festival down.

Former C-Jazz president Henry Beaumont told the Herald "he expected to see a big drive for corporate sponsorship and other fundraising opportunities. Instead, ambitious bookings and expenses piled up. In the end, putting on as many as seven acts a night simply wasn’t doable for the financially-troubled festival."

The effort to promote the Festival has been rather subdued as I can attest. In the last two months I've received 10 times as many emails from Beat Niq Jazz and Social Club promoting weekly shows than I have from the C-Jazz. It just didn't feel as if the Jazz Festival was being pushed as much as it normally is this year. When reading that "hundreds of tickets will be refunded" and then seeing that "over 200 great musicans from around the world, and around the corner" were set to perform - according to C-Jazz's website - it's not hard to see mathematically that this thing was probably nose-diving for quite a while now. And it is uncertain at this point if the Jazz Festival will ever return.

This would have been the 31st Calgary Jazz Festival, instead a board is left in ruins and in need of rebuilding, hundreds of musicians are left without pay and possibly thousands of music lovers will miss out on a great live show experience. The one bit of decent news that came out of the Herald's extensive report is that "some of the shows may still go on — just not under the C-Jazz banner." This means that it's up to Calgary's music scene to keep the spirit alive and support whomever decides to still show up - some legendary acts such as Ben E. King, Cedar Walton and Chick Corea were set to perform - despite being burned by terrible circumstance.