Keith Bruce has a stern warning for lovers of Glasgow's esteemed jazz festival
FOR this year's Glasgow International Jazz Festival, launched at the City Hall yesterday, the Bottom Line is neither an acoustic music club in New York City nor the stave for the stride pianist's thumping left hand. The bottom line that really matters this year is the accountant's one, the one that says whether the festival, once the most financially secure in the city, marches on into the next century.
In the heady days of Glasgow's year as City of Culture in 1990, the director of the jazz festival was able to play the currency market, shrewdly buying up dollars at an advantageous rate to pay the fees of visiting musicians. New artistic director Olive May Millen has had no readies to indulge in such canny schemes in the very year when it might have been wisest to do so.
Naturally, such realities were only mentioned sotto voce yesterday. Although cut from ten days to five for the headline acts, with the first five reserved for local talent, the festival aims to make a substantial dent in its six-figure deficit this year and is anxious to accentuate the positive.
Board chairman Lord Provost Pat Lally said: ''Reports of our demise have been greatly exaggerated. The jazz festival plays an important part in the cultural life of Glasgow.''
That vote of confidence is matched by a city council grant of #113,700, which has sustained the operation. With #20,000 from the Scottish Arts Council, and smaller sums from the Musicians' Union and Glasgow Development Agency, the festival can still approach the commercial sponsorship market on a healthy footing. Yet Millen was anxious to give full credit to prime sponsor Atlantic Telecom, which has upped its contribution from #17,500 to #25,000 in the second year of a three-year deal. That attracts important matching funds from the Government. The message from sales and marketing director Martin Beard is clear: ''We are trying to appeal to people who want something innovative and different, and we are looking for events that encapsulate that and what the city is trying to do.''
Beard's nomination for unmissable concert will be shared by many music lovers: African vocal harmony group Ladysmith Black Mambazo, who leapt into Western consciousness via Paul Simon's Gracelands album. That concert, at the Old Fruitmarket on July 4, stands aside the Besito de Coco Latin gig the previous evening in the same venue, and bluesman Buddy Guy there on Thursday July 2, as events designed to appeal to the widest possible audience.
In one of the strongest programmes for many years, all but the most singular tastes will be catered for in the festival brochure: a stylish piece of print sure to find a home on many a coffee table. The Fruitmarket season also includes maestro of the Hammond organ Jimmy Smith (July 1), the ever-compelling Dave Holland Group (July 2), the world's best tenor saxophonist (no dissent at the back there, please) Michael Brecker (July 3), Lee Kontiz guesting with the Strathclyde Youth Jazz Orchestra and in a trio with Paul Bley and Charlie Haden (July 4), and concerts by saxist Chico Freeman and Norwegian techno trumpeter Nils Petter Molvaer on the closing Sunday (July 5).
Add to that the familiar festival furniture of a Dixieland-fuelled cruise aboard the paddle steamer Waverley, a summer's eve dancing in Princes Square, and the regular late night club at the Marriot Hotel, and the festival is still firmly in business. The bottom line is - use it or lose it.
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