Complaints about quality, quantity and appropriateness have ensured that jazz and the Sydney Festival have had an uneasy relationship over the years. As Brett Sheehy—artistic director from 2002-2005—heads off to take charge of the Adelaide Festival of Arts, it is an apposite moment to take a look at how jazz has been represented by the Sydney’s largest cultural event.
The consensus appears that the ebullient and fast-talking Sheehy has done a good job since taking the reins from Leo Schofield. The fact that he has managed to please many in the arts establishment, while ensuring there were plenty of bums on seats is no small achievement, especially since the state government provides limited financial support. (Okay, $2 million is not chump change but producing the festival involves more than putting up a few posters, unstacking the seats and waiting for the crowd to arrive.)
Box office revenue is easy to calculate but how do you judge a festival’s artistic success? In the performing arts I’d argue that among the principle objectives of serious festivals are the presentation of pre-eminent artists and/or their work, as well as those performers who are advancing a particular artistic practice and best represent its current trajectory. Often these are the same thing; sometimes not.
So, in short, this means putting on the key people—the giants, if you like—and those who are at the pointy end of creativity in a particular medium.
And the Sydney Festival has done this. It has presented works by innovative overseas arts practitioners, including Ariane Mnouchkine (The Flood Drummers), Robert Wilson (The Black Rider) and Robert Lepage (Far Side of the Moon). Additionally, significant Australian artists have been given a chance to present their work: Katherine Thomson (Harbour), Kate Champion (Already Elsewhere) and Stephen Sewell (Three Furies). All compelling, relevant art, according the reviewers.
If this assessment is generally correct, what of the jazz component of recent Sydney Festivals? Did Sheehy, and before him Schofield, seek to identify the greats and other groundbreaking artists? Did they look for the people who are best defining (or redefining) jazz today?
Sadly, I don’t think so. It would appear that jazz simply isn’t accorded the same programming consideration as other art forms. While I’m not privy to the festival’s decision-making process let me suggest a few possible reasons.
First up, the ugly reality is that jazz is not taken as seriously in Australian arts circles as it is Europe or the United States; it is often seen as a marginal art form, somewhat on par with folk.
More particularly, its status as a dynamic and evolving music is often ignored, which means that the threshold test for inclusion into the festival need only be one that combines a notion of “quality” with an appropriate level of prominence. Given such a paradigm, the selection of, say, Chick Corea and Gary Burton (2000) Branford Marsalis Quartet (2001), Chucho Valdes (2003) and Dianne Reeves (2005) makes some sort of sense.
I’m not suggesting that these artists are unworthy of inclusion (although a little bit of the Corea/Burton duets went a very long way). It’s more that the selections consistently lack imagination and risk. Where are the music’s seminal figures, such as Ornette Coleman and Sonny Rollins? Where are the new ground breakers? Sure Ornette doesn’t play much and Sonny doesn’t like to fly, but have they ever been invited? Has anyone at the festival sought to develop a relationship with musicians of this stature in order to ensure their participation at some point in the future, a policy no doubt effectively employed to obtain the services of important performers in other disciplines.
Perhaps it is a question of expertise. Are there jazz specialists within the Festival? If not, where do they obtain advice on potential guests?
Without the same aesthetic framework and filters in place for jazz as clearly exists for other artistic categories, what you end up with is very the thing Sheehy says he doesn’t like in festival programming: the shopping trolley approach to artist selection. Is there a particular reason that, say, Branford Marsalis or Chick Corea/Gary Burton appeared other than a management agency offered them for an acceptable fee? Probably not.
The great advantage a festival director has over other promoters is that people, at least in part, buy tickets to festival events wanting to be surprised; they are willing to experiment. And audiences are prepared to pay their money and take a punt because they have some confidence that festival has scoured the globe for the best and the most interesting.
People didn’t pack out performances of this year’s hit Black Rider because they had heard of its overseas success or they were fans of director Robert Wilson but because, initially at least, the festival successfully promoted the event.
Ahmad Jamal doesn’t have a particularly high profile in jazz circles these days, let alone outside them, but he filled the Concert Hall of the Sydney Opera House; Dianne Reeves who, despite her Grammys, isn’t anything like a household name in Australia packed out the State Theatre twice.
There’s no need to regularly present the jazz equivalent of Swan Lake or The Magic Flute. If the festival says its worth seeing by virtue if its inclusion in the programme and attendant marketing then there’s likely to be an audience willing to give it a go.
Further, Sheehy told the Herald recently that he didn’t like the idea of a festival where overseas artists were shipped in and out without making meaningful connections. “Wherever possible, I will have international artists and companies collaborating with ours,” he said.
The nature of an art form predicated on improvisation makes it ideal for just such collaboration, but there has been very little of it in the jazz field during the past few festivals. On a couple of occasions big band leaders, such as Maria Schneider, have conducted local ensembles for Jazz in the Domain concerts, but the large outdoor setting was unsympathetic to the music’s nuances.
(On the subject of the Domain concerts, why did this year’s event —a tribute to the blues—feature non-jazz musicians among the highlighted artists? It seemed like an opportunity was missed to give prominence to some of the talented players on the local jazz scene. You want blues and blues musicans, call the event Blues in the Domain.)
And this year Paul Grabowsky presented a very strong international group—Joe Lovano, Ed Schuller from the US and local musicians Scott Tinkler and Simon Barker—but the project was developed by Grabowsky outside the context of the Sydney Festival.
So too was Testimony – The Legend of Charlie Parker, an innovative melding of forms by Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Yusef Komunyakaa and leading Sydney musician Sandy Evans but, regardless, the Festival deserves great credit for staging this major production.
Let’s see the audacious John Zorn out here with his downtown cohorts, working with Sydney musicians on his Cobra game improvisations or perhaps performing the music of Ennio Morricone against a screening of Sergio Leone’s spaghetti westerns.
Or Butch Morris working with locals on one of his “Conduction” projects; David Murray leading a group of indigenous Caribbean musicians; the Dave Holland Big Band; Don Byron’s Symphony Space Adventures Orchestra; Charlie Haden’s Liberation Music Orchestra; William Parker with David S. Ware and/or the Little Huey Creative Music Orchestra. How about Keith Jarrett? You no doubt will have your own wish list.
Some years ago Anthony Steele brought out Cecil Taylor for the Brisbane Biennale. I hope new Sydney Festival director Fergus Linehan has half his courage and insight.
Peter Jordan reviewed jazz for the Sydney Morning Herald and Australian Rolling Stone in the 1990s. He is currently involved in making a documentary about saxophonist Bernie McGann. The opinions expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of SIMA.