Mount Hood Jazz Fest in the swing again

PORTLAND — A year ago, it looked like the gig was up for the Mount Hood Jazz Festival, a victim of the bad economy and debts dating from when the bands were booming.

In June 2002, organizers announced the demise of the Northwest's premier jazz festival 22 years after it started.

"We thought it was a wonderful legacy, and we could not let it go away," said Sue O'Halloran, who led a drive to save the festival.

O'Halloran and her group staged a smaller event in August 2002, drawing about 3,000 fans, compared with 10,000 during the peak years of the mid-1980s. This year, the festival is scheduled Aug. 2-3, with about 6,000 jazz fans expected, she said.

"The Mount Hood Festival has a really beautiful reputation," said saxophonist Joe Lovano, a Grammy Award-winner whose trio played a "kickoff" concert in Portland on May 4 to generate interest and money for the revived event.

Lovano will be back for the festival, playing with a nine-piece band. Also on the bill are the Peters Drury Trio, Jason Moran, Greg Osby, the Tin Hat Trio, Nnenna Freelon and the Classical Jazz Quartet. The program also will feature selected local students, who will work in a clinic with Lovano.

A sour economic note

Among the more than 500 jazz festivals in the nation, a number of mid-size events like Mount Hood have been hit by the downturn — places like Maui, Kansas City and Jacksonville, Fla. And attendance has suffered with the passing of legendary musicians and the graying of the audience.

Despite those troubles, more than 550 jazz or blues festivals are held annually across the United States, said Glenn Sabin, whose magazine, JazzTimes, helps sponsor 25 of them, including events in San Francisco, Atlanta, Chicago, Detroit and the Portland area.

"The number is pretty stable," Sabin said from his corporate office in Silver Spring, Md.

The Mount Hood Festival, he said, "is a quality-directed event. The program has been good, well-balanced. It's in a great setting."

The festival, with lowered expectations and a sounder financial footing, resumes its place among what Sabin called "destination events."

In the early days, it built its reputation attracting such legends as Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughan, Rosemary Clooney, Dizzy Gillespie, Dave Brubeck and younger stars, like Wynton Marsalis, said Bill Royston, the artistic director.

The event fell victim to its own success. The organizers spent vast sums yearly on such logistics as seating and stages, and doled out hundreds of thousands of dollars in proceeds to nonprofit sponsors.

By the mid-1990s, the annual budget had grown to about $800,000 a year, said Royston.

A change of venue

Little was left in the bank when hard times hit, and by last summer, the festival was $240,000 in debt and unable to pay its creditors. The biggest bill, $62,000, was owed to Mount Hood Community College, the venue.

The stage was moved from the college stadium, which seats 10,000 but had not been filled for years, to Gresham Park.

On revenues of $126,000, the organizers came out $14,000 in the black, enabling them to buy the festival name for $5,000 and plan for the future.

The musicians are happy.

"It's being moved to a smaller place, where you can play to a more intimate audience," said headliner Lovano, who won a Grammy in 2000 for his album, "52nd Street Themes."

The fans, too, seem happy.

"Jazz by its nature is an intimate art form," said Royston.

"If you put it on a football field, as we did, you lose that intimacy. It demands more of an intimacy, which our new venue gives us."