Turning the Village Into a Festival of Jazz

Published: September 17, 1994

Every night of the week, 52 weeks of the year, Greenwich Village offers enough jazz to create a festival. A 15-minute walk from the Village Vanguard on Seventh Avenue will get you to Bradley's, where the best of the young musicians, along with some brilliant older ones, congregate. The Blue Note, just a few minutes away, offers concert-level headliners in an intimate club, and Sweet Basil has adventurous music, along with the irrepressible Doc Cheatham. New Yorkers take this abundance for granted.

Twelve years ago, the Dewar's Greenwich Village Jazz Festival tried to rectify this blase attitude with an ambitious plan to turn the Village into a festival, selling passes that offered a discount for admission to most of the clubs. In 1987, that attempt fell apart. On Monday, the festival will start again. The festival's existence, along with its new sponsorship, augurs well for jazz.

Now called the Panasonic Village Jazz Festival, it is to open with a free concert at Washington Square Park at 4 P.M. on Monday, with an extraordinary double bill. The tenor saxophonists Stanley Turrentine and Eddie Harris, two of the most underrated and sophisticated musicians in jazz, are to perform, backed by the Cedar Walton trio.

The concert is also to include a group with some of the best younger musicians now playing: Nicholas Payton on trumpet; Abraham Burton and David Sanchez on saxophones; Renee Rosnes on piano; Peter Washington on bass, and Greg Hutchinson on drums. It's meant to be a loose, raucous blowing session.

There is also a concert for children, along with discount booklets for nine clubs, where audiences can hear everything from the great drummer Max Roach to the mainstream pianists Mulgrew Miller and Kenny Barron to a group of younger musicians to be led by the drummer Carl Allen. The discount booklets offer 50 percent off club admission; they cost $50 for single admissions and $75 for double admissions, and may be used for the seven nights of the festival. They are available at the Blue Note, Bradley's, Sweet Basil, Village Vanguard and Visiones.

Behind it all is the muscle of industry, led by Panasonic but also including Bandai (the manufacturer of the Power Ranger toys), Japan Air Lines, American Express and the jazz radio station WBGO-FM (88.3), all of which have provided financial help. It's the type of support that is increasingly being seen in the jazz world, and being viewed with some skepticism by purists. And it underscores the increasing interplay between industry, Madison Avenue and jazz.

"In a way jazz is growing up, and what we're seeing is not unlike what has happened in the other big entertainment complexes, whether it be sports or pop music," said James Browne, the WBGO disk jockey. "The old days where the price of a ticket supported the whole structure: they're gone. You now have to have outside help, because the arithmetic doesn't make sense anymore. I'm just happy that our sponsors aren't promoting something carcinogenic, which is rare in jazz."

Planning for the festival began last year when Mr. Browne joined forces with the general manager of Sweet Basil, Richard Nakano, and the critic Stanley Crouch. Mr. Browne had been part of the original festival. Mr. Nakano had contacts in Japan, where commercial support for the music is widespread. And Mr. Crouch has expertise gained from being the artistic consultant for Lincoln Center's jazz program.