Newport Jazz Festival Newport Jazz Festival The Newport Jazz Festival is a music festival held every summer in Newport, Rhode Island. Elaine Lorillard established the festival in 1954, and she and husband Louis Lorillard financed it for many years. They hired George Wein to organize the first festival and bring jazz to Rhode Island. Most of the early festivals were broadcast on Voice of America radio, and many performances were recorded and released as albums. In 1972, the Newport Jazz Festival was moved to New York City. In 1981, it became a two-site festival when it was returned to Newport while continuing in
Phil Woods was to help foster an appreciation of jazz and its relationship to other artistic disciplines. Each year, the organization hosts the Celebration of the Arts Festival in the town of Delaware Water Gap in September. In 2005, Jazzed Media released the documentary "Phil Woods: A Life in E Flat – Portrait of a Jazz Legend", directed by Rich Lerner and produced by Graham Carter. Woods was married to Chan Parker, the common-law wife of Charlie Parker, for seventeen years and was the stepfather to Chan's daughter, Kim. On September 4, 2015, he performed a tribute to "Charlie Parker with Strings"