This year’s Ottawa International Jazz Festival has been heavily criticized for including non-jazz acts as headliners to draw crowds and finance the festival. In one case, the Ottawa Citizen’s jazz critic, who has decried the jazz festival’s lineup for taking the focus off of jazz performers and pushing them into smaller indoor venues, has gone so far as to decline to cover the non-jazz acts on the outdoor stages.
According to the festival’s programming manager, Petr Cancura, the majority of the performers at the festival are still jazz musicians with only six acts out of 116 not falling in that genre.
While many people have been excited to see the changes, the jazz purist community has been in an uproar about the venture into pop, rock and blues. Because the jazz purist community is so small, a pure jazz lineup can only attract so many audience members, which has led to problems in financing the festival. They need to stop being so critical, as the general public still sees the festival as keeping with its integrity as a jazz festival. If jazz purists would like to see a jazz festival at this scale at all, they have to accept that the festival is a business and cannot pay for itself.
Based on the opening weekend’s record-setting attendance and sold-out jazz and non-jazz performances at the festival, this year’s lineup shakeup is definitely paying off. The decision to include larger non-jazz acts has made the festival sustainable and seems to be attracting people to the jazz performances, albeit on smaller stages. However, organizers should have more jazz headliners. And as for the jazz purists, they will probably never be happy.