Brandon Jazz Festival board dissolves corporation
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Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 17/01/2022 (1525 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.
The board of directors of Brandon Jazz Festival Incorporated has voted to dissolve the corporation, but the festival will continue next year.
Keeping the corporation going in the face of uncertainty caused by the COVID-19 pandemic led the board to make the decision.
They had been discussing dissolution since last spring, said former executive director Brent Campbell. They had been weighing the pros and cons and had a formal vote last fall.
“The fact we haven’t been able to have a festival in three years made us think it was time for us to dissolve and hand it over to someone else to organize,” he said. “I wasn’t sure that we could ever return to the template we had enjoyed for so many years with so many groups attending, and it felt like a major change in the format was necessary. The board felt that another entity would be best suited to take an event like this in a new direction.”
Campbell added that he personally had been considering stepping down and letting someone else take over his role before this vote was held.
In 2020, they were forced to cancel just 10 days before the festival was to begin. Then they were forced to cancel again in 2021 and now 2022. This seemed like a good time to do this with the festival having had to cancel the event for the third consecutive year.
However, the show will go on, in 2023. Brandon University has agreed to take over the administration and running of a new event with a new format.
“It’s a natural passing of the torch because the festival was held on the university campus and many in the public believed the university already ran the festival,” Campbell said.
This will give the university plenty of lead time to develop a new format for the festival, he said.
A news release stated Greg Gatien, dean of the School of Music at Brandon University, and Jazz and Contemporary Popular Music faculty members Eric Platz, Marika Galea and Ken Gold will be responsible for the new event.
Held every year on the third weekend in March, the festival started in 1983 as an educational event for students. Groups were brought in from around Manitoba, Ontario and the United States to run workshops, have groups play and be adjudicated by experts in the genre.
Campbell said looking at archived programs, he calculates between 13,000 to 14,000 students went through the festival. He added they had been missing one program, but a member of the public came forward with a copy and their archives are now complete.
The release also said the corporation and its members wish to thank all the many directors, groups, adjudicators and performers for their support since 1983 when the festival started with 12 groups and two adjudicators, Phil Nimmons and Don Clark.
» kmckinley@brandonsun.com
» Twitter: @karenleighmcki1