Ventnor Blog

At the end of last week, we received the following email from the Jazz Office. In what must be an incredibly busy time for them, we were surprised by the length of the email - it must’ve taken a long time to compose, and as so much effort seems to have gone into it, we thought it would be worthwhile publishing it on VentnorBlog. They were happy for us to publish the email, so make of it what you will. Ed

Dear Sal and Simon,

Thank you for your last posting in reference to the Jazz Festival in Ventnor. There are a few individuals (we do know who they are) who have made it their business to destroy the jazz festival and destroy us as individuals because we are perceived as “competition” to them. They have made this attack very personal.

It is clear that they want to stop any more of our festivals happening in the town, that they wish to totally vilify us as individuals and that they wish to benefit their own small jazz or event related “business” as a result. They have used the excuse of difficulties we had in paying bills (for reasons cited below) to catch the imagination of the County Press.

They are doing this very successfully at the moment because the people who offer us support behind the scenes are not as vocal in public and we have chosen to get on with solving problems rather than wasting time biting them back.

I suppose, in retrospect, we are an easy target because we live here, we sit here in a goldfish bowl on Pier Street six days a week and have tried to put the jazz festival’s business to Island suppliers in the past few years (although our experiences of many of them have sadly caused us to seek mainland suppliers now for many items, as the Bestival and Festival have done).

There are two invoices that are constantly cited as being money owed but which are subject to commercial dispute and currently in litigation, one from a hotel in Shanklin and one from an Island marquee company who also owes us some sponsorship money, so we cannot reveal the details in case of prejudicing the cases in either direction - although we can say that one judgement, made incorrectly against us as individuals without our knowledge, was last week set aside by the court so that the case - may continue correctly as a commercial dispute.

Like you, we have done what we have done for the jazz festival in Ventnor because we like living here and value the creative, musical and artistic community and people that Ventnor keeps and attracts. We know jazz isn’t everybody’s bag (which is why we agreed to help organise a folk & blues festival with Vaguely Sunny, for other musical tastes in the town) but this year’s jazz line up, more than any previous year, is really designed to show non-jazzers a set of sounds that are the basis of much of today’s main music culture - it is very much a funky and international and mixed jazz line up with roots in Soul, R&B, Funk, Hip-Hop, America, Africa, the Carribean and the Middle East. Maceo Parker, who last year toured the UK with Prince, is not easy to secure and he is coming to our town’s stage in the Winter Gardens in six weeks time - as a double whammy with the funky trombonist and BBC award winning Dennis Rollins (who rocked last year’s Messin Around Club Night before the power cut!).

It seems to have become trendy to attack us here in the Jazz Office but we, sincerely, really are not the villains of the piece and have been badly let down by sponsors, investor illness and co-promoters who distanced themselves, all in one year.

We have worked really hard, at personal cost, to pay off the bills that the 2007 jazz festival was left with as a result and we continue to work to put the new Folk & Blues Festival finances back into shape. We have done this with the moral and financial support of a few good business people on the Island and in town and with private individuals contributions. Had we been of any dishonourable nature, we could have walked away and left quite a number of people unpaid - we chose not to do this and have kept working through the problems encountered.

Over this and last week, theJazz digital radio has been running a series of adverts for the IOW International Jazz Festival and on Tuesday evening, the Jazz Hour with Roger Day and Trudy Kerr on BBC Radio Kent, BBC Southern Counties, and BBC Radio Berkshire featured our festival with music from various artists playing here and an interview with Ian Shaw who will be appearing twice. Here is the link to LISTEN AGAIN (choose the Roger Day show, click on Tue and fast forward about 2 hours into the show to get to the jazz hour).

Yesterday I was interviewed, as every year, for Radio Forest FM and Radio Solent. Publications across the South carry articles this month. 89% of ticket purchasers to date are mainland visitors and 11% are Island residents. The ratio is usually roughly 60/40.

We would like people of the town to rally round to keep this jazz festival morally supported and promoted - for the benefit of all traders and hospitality outlets in the towns, whilst we keep working to keep the finances sorted - as we have fought and worked hard to do over the last 3 years. If we are caused to give up then the net result is no cashflow - which would be detrimental to the interests of all parties.

Everything we have said or written from our side to the County Press has not been published or has been part quoted and given a twisted viewpoint.

Meetings have been held that include people who have absolutely nothing to do with the jazz festival or who have been paid months ago, that seem to have discussed tactics on how to stop us running the jazz festival, to which we have never been invited nor been privy to but in which we appear to have had our characters called into question. We don’t want to go over all this ground again or seek to justify - what we would like to do is what we have
worked the last 10 months to achieve, with a last few weeks push, is to run this jazz festival with its amazingly good line up, in this town and give all those who want to enjoy it, a good time here in Ventnor during the “Easter” school holidays.

Here attached are some of the press releases sent out and as yet unprinted in the County Press, for your use however you chose (although today I note the CP have put a tiny corner article into the weekender that is easily missed). I am yet to write an article about the amazing jazz guitarists who are also appearing and one about the headliners and club night at the Winter Gardens.

Charity, Music, Ventnor, whitwell