Newcastle Jazz Festival - Past and Present

(By Dave Clarke)

Bebop’s review of the one-day showcase of six regional bands at the Tyne Bank Brewery in August referred back to the festival from which it took its name – Newcastle Jazz Festival 1974 to 1995 -which, it told us, featured Art Pepper, George Melly and Barney Kessel. “Those were indeed halcyon days” said the review “but to compare today’s festival with those that took place back then – as has been done elsewhere – defeats the object entirely.”  Well does it? What exactly is the object that is being defeated by making the comparison? As far as I could see the review didn’t provide the answer.

I have no objection at all to an event showcasing the best of the regional bands. After all I’m pretty sure I booked all of the bands featured but for the Big Band when I was working at the Jazz Cafe – and that includes Alexander Bone. But Newcastle Jazz Festival ran for a full week, featured major national and international names, filled the 5 or 600-seat Newcastle Playhouse from 1975 on and for its last half dozen years also had a second venue at Live Theatre. It was, in short, one of the city’s major annual cultural events.

So I just can’t see the justification in calling the event at Tyne Bank Brewery the “Newcastle Jazz Festival.”  Tyne Bank Jazz Festival, yes.  Ouseburn Jazz Festival, fine. Or East End Jazz Festival.

What’s brought this on is that we’re rapidly approaching the third edition of Wesley Stevenson’s Newcastle Festival of Jazz and Improvised Music (3^rd to 6^th October) and although Wes had and has no intention of naming his festival after NJF, I think there’s a case to be made that his event is much more deserving of the name, in that he has succeeded in creating a genuinely exciting special occasion.

This year’s four-day festival, as it says on the tin, combines jazz and improvised music, and both performances and workshops. The musicians featured are drawn from Canada, Australia, Italy, Germany,the Netherlands and the UK, including our own region.  Of the twenty regional musicians featured the majority are prominent members of the local scene including Andy Champion, Paul Edis, Sue Ferris, Graham Hardy, Neil Harland, Bradley Johnston, Faye MacCalman, Russ Morgan, John Pope, Rob Walker and Mark Williams. More than half of all the performances see musicians working in unusual formats which, for my money, makes for added excitement.

The festival’s two workshops are a two day British Society of Aesthetics Workshop on improvisation hosted by Durham University at the Lit and Phil and a four hour Jazz Coop workshop led by Scots pianist and festival performer Richard Michaels at the Sage.

The final point to make about Wes’s festival is that he has succeeded in gaining the support of other promoters in the city and of venues so that his event spreads right across the city from east to west and to the north.

I doubt that anyone owns the name “Newcastle Jazz Festival,” not even the founder Andy Hudson, Newcastle City Council, or the theatre, the two organisations which in succession took on management of the event.  But in my opinion there’s no doubt as to which of the two existing festivals deserves the name.

Dave Clarke