George Wein, the creative visionary credited with creating the concept of the contemporary music festival, died on Monday at his apartment in Manhattan. He was 95. Wein founded the Newport Jazz Festival in 1954, but his crowning achievement came in 1970 when he brought the concept to New Orleans with the Jazz and Heritage Festival, a landmark event enabling the public interracial celebration of black culture in a city that was still struggling with the aftermath of integration.
The New York Times reports, “By the middle 1960s, festivals had become as important as nightclubs and concert halls on the itinerary of virtually every major jazz performer, and Mr. Wein had come to dominate the festival landscape.”
Wein was born to Jewish parents in Boston, Massachusetts, in 1925. He played jazz pianist in his youth and graduated from Newton High School. He attended Boston University, where he led a small group which played professionally around the city before he joined the U.S. Army during World War II. He returned to higher education after his tour of duty and graduated from Boston University’s College of Liberal Arts in 1950. During the same year, he opened a jazz club in Boston called Storyville and later expanded the enterprise to include a record label. He also began to teach a course at Boston University on the history of jazz.
In 1969, following the success of the Newport Jazz Festival, Wein formed Festival Productions, which produces the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival, the Kool Jazz Festival, the Essence Music Festival as well as JVC Jazz festivals and events in six cities across the U.S. and five countries around the world. In 2005, Festival Productions had to overcome severe financial obstacles which nearly cost the company its contract with Jazz Fest. A partnership with the high-powered AEG Productions saved the day. Then the devastation following Hurricane Katrina nearly ended the 2006 Festival before it began.
In 2006, Wein spoke with OffBeat contributing writer John Swenson in the aftermath of Katrina about the challenges his organization faced in the last two years to put the festival together and his vision for its future. When asked about the role Jazz Fest played in elevating the exposure of Black cultural traditions in New Orleans, such as Mardi Gras Indians and second line parades, Wein said, “No question about it. That was the whole purpose of it when we started, to celebrate the culture of New Orleans, Louisiana and I think they’ve done a very good job. It started that way, because I didn’t know anything about it, I just found Quint Davis and said let’s get everybody involved. I knew about New Orleans jazz, and a little bit about the funk, but I didn’t know about the Indians and all that, so I was in a learning process the whole way. I had a good time learning.”
Further complimenting Davis, Wein added, “I could see that I had this kid who was a natural producer. He kept coming up with ideas and by the fourth year I started taking more and more of a background seat. The first year I brought my whole staff down from New York. I look at the program books, that’s the only way I remember. Slowly but surely they built up the local organization. I couldn’t do what I do if I didn’t build up people with a certain amount of autonomy. Of course I’m still involved with things. Quint is on the phone with me two or three times a day, particularly when there’s trouble, which is what we’ve had the last two years. I don’t get involved in the actual running of the festival but I’m in on all the planning.”
WWOZ radio’s obituary for Wein states, “Over the course of his seventy year career, Wein produced hundreds of festivals around the world, including the JVC Jazz Festivals in New York, London, Nice, and Newport; the Verizon Music Festival in New York, Los Angeles, Washington, and Tampa; the Aurex Festivals in Japan; the Playboy Jazz Festival in Hollywood; the Boston Globe Festival; and more.”
In 2004, Wein published his autobiography, Myself Among Others: A Life in Jazz.
Together with his wife Joyce, whom Wein married in 1959, the couple supported numerous music heritage iniatives, including the George and Joyce Wein New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Center (located at 1225 N. Rampart), which in addition to serving as a performing arts center promotes music education.
