What makes a good festival?

This author shares his thoughts on why the Montreal Jazz Festival is so good, and what the SF Jazz Festival might do to improve.

ContraCostaTimes.com | 07/30/2006 | How cities can jazz up music festivals: "What makes Montreal such an adrenaline-inducing experience is the way that the festival grabs hold of the city's imagination, becoming the dominant cultural story for a huge metropolitan region of more than 3 million people. With more than 150 performances by a staggering range of musicians, many only tangentially related to jazz, the most exciting part of the festival is discovering musicians you've never heard before. For music fans, it can be an almost overwhelming experience.

"With a typically Canadian embrace of sensible urban planning, Montreal has developed the ideal infrastructure for throwing a huge, multi-venue event. The festival takes over the heart of the city's cultural district, turning several major streets into car-free zones while transforming the plaza in front of the Contemporary Art Museum into a vast outdoor party, with refreshments, food stalls and multiple bandstands offering free concerts.

"The festival's eight indoor venues, which offer ticketed concerts, are either on the plaza or within a few blocks."

Festival funding

This is a good article,"Grass always greener at the other city's festivals," in the 7/24/2006 Ottawa Business Journal on funding of music festivals in Ottawa and Montreal.

The Ottawa Bluesfest receives $33,000 (Canadian) from the city. And around $500,000 from over 50 business sponsors. It operates "with a paid staff of three people, a total budget of $4 million and a talent budget of $1.8 million."

Equipe Spectra (the blanket organization that administers the jazz fest and two other Montreal festivals) "employs over 40 full-time paid marketing people year-round, while receiving less funding-per-dollar from the City of Montreal. The Montreal Jazz Fest does pay for the several concert halls it uses, but is also allowed usage of parks and selected streets for free – a better deal than Ottawa's Bluesfest, which paid in the six-digits for use of city land this year."

According to Alain Simard, president of Equipe Spectra, "The Montreal Jazz Festival has a $20 million budget, and 12.5 per cent of that comes from the government and public funding." Private sponsorship contributes 52 per cent and 30 per cent comes from concessions and food and beverage sales.

Canadian Jazz festivals and their economic impact

The Toronto Downtown Jazz costs about $3.5 million (Canadian) to stage (paid for through ticket sales and sponsorships), but adds $20 million to the local economy. (Not that finding sponsors is ever easy: it took six people making pitches to 75 companies over 12 months to find three new sponsors.) The biggest cost is the entertainment. Jazz festivals in Ottawa and Montreal are held around the same time so that out-of-town artists can play all of them, making it more economical to fly them in.

The Montreal International Jazz Festival costs $20 million and generates at least $100 million for the local economy.

"The most recent economic impact study, by Festivals & Events Ontario, found that the top 17 festivals in Ontario have a combined financial impact of $345 million on the regional economy and create more than 10,000 full-time jobs annually. Smaller festivals generate on average between $400,000 and $2.7 million for local economies. Were even three major festivals to stop operating, more than $100 million would be lost to regional economies every year."

TheStar.com - Festivals give Ontario a financial boost