Artistic events of any sort must deal with hard financial realities. An event that relies entirely on sponsorship, with no paying customers to offset expenses, has an especially steep hill to climb. For the Northampton Jazz Festival, this year proved too much.
For the last five years, the September festival in downtown Northampton had been laying on free, live jazz showcasing some of the field’s top talent . Last year, it grew more ambitious, spreading its offerings over five days with “downtown struts” in Amherst, Easthampton and Northampton, as well as the daylong Saturday program in the Armory Street lot.
Now, with one month to go, organizers have decided to pull the plug on this year’s event because the financial support was not there.
For live music fans, this is unfortunate. Seeing musicians, from talented high-schoolers to players of international renown such as Lionel Loueke and Ben Allison, perform their craft on stage is the best way to experience jazz music.
The festival’s organizers offered a broad range of styles, from traditional to experimental, appealing to a diverse crowd. Surprisingly, perhaps, for a parking lot next to a multistory garage, the outdoor venue, ringed by food and craft vendors, proved conducive to an enjoyable concert experience.
Jazz, it’s true, appeals to what might be considered a niche audience, and businesses and organizations don’t have unlimited resources. Their generosity is sought for many causes, philanthropic as well as artistic, and worthy causes sometimes compete against each other.
Organizations from the United Way to Greenfield Community College seek corporate support for their endeavors. From Northampton’s Family Fourth celebration to the Community Arts Trust, which is trying to raise $5.2 million for its new performance and event space on Hawley Street, requests for sponsorship are a fact of life for most businesses.
The jazz festival, with a budget of $50,000, enjoyed major sponsorship from TD Bank and Baystate Health, and received support from dozens of smaller businesses and organizations. But this year, organizers say, the donations fell short and a lack of volunteers added to the difficulties.
If business support is not quite there, perhaps the new Downtown Northampton Association can help make up the shortfall. Through participation in the DNA is voluntary, unlike the Business Improvement District it succeeded, a key part of the organization’s mission is support for cultural events.
DNA Director Amy Prescott, in an email this week, confirmed the organization’s willingness to work with the festival, and noted that the festival’s board members had not approached the downtown group for support.
“I think everybody has a shared interest in a strong, vital downtown,” Northampton Mayor David Narkewicz said at the organization’s launch in November. “We all have a stake in that — whether you’re a property owner, you’re a business owner, you’re a city resident, whether you’re the mayor — we all share that interest.”
For all the struggles that jazz musicians face, there is plenty of support for this great American art form in the Valley, from the weekly jam sessions and Tom Reney’s and Kari Njiri’s wonderful programs on WFCR, to the five colleges with the University of Massachusetts’ thriving program to the forefront.
In the face of all this, it’s more than a little discouraging if Northampton cannot maintain its fledgling tradition of a live jazz showcase when the economy, if anything, is healthier than when it began.
As Rick Gifford, one of the festival’s founders, put it, “If Northampton isn’t about music and eating and local, then what the hell is it? It’s got to be about those things.”