Monday, March 14, 2016

London Jazz Festival - how we try to deal with it

We have started putting together our programme for the EFG London Jazz Festival for 2016. Out in November.
At present, I am collating a whole range of proposals  because, of course, the Vortex has limited space. How best to balance things out between the sort of gigs supporting our scene here in London and musicians from elsewhere in the UK or overseas. (There will be, almost certainly, our regular Mopomoso and London Jazz Orchestra dates, by the way, as well as double bills involving Dice Factory and Benoit Delbecq/Petter Eldh/Jonas Burgwinkel.)
The London Jazz Festival is not a guaranteed money spinner for the Vortex. With 30+ gigs a night going on around town, we have to be careful. For example, one of the best gigs, creatively, last year was Orquestra Mahatma. And there were about 15 only in the audience.
Also, we ourselves receive no direct additional funding for our programming. Of course, sometimes the gigs that we want have support from elsewhere. We are reliant, as ever, therefore on musicians' own co-operation with the club and our own enthusiasms.
Meanwhile, the Festival itself has already announced some of its own headliners! Of course, one of the other problems for the audience is that this may be the only chance to hear these line-ups when they are in London. But a punter can only go to one gig a night. So this immediately precludes the chance that something even better turns up later.


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