Staff and Wire Reports
LOS ANGELES — Citing unexpected public safety and municipal permitting costs, organizers of the LA Jazz Festival canceled the event Aug. 7, hours before the opening night concert in Leimert Park was supposed to be held.
Festival founder and CEO Martin Ludlow announced the festival would be postponed until 2027.
“Due to significant, unanticipated last-minute public safety and municipal costs associated with the final permitting of the On The Beach Festival, we have reached the decision to unfortunately postpone this year’s inaugural LA Jazz Festival,” Ludlow said in a statement. “Although this decision was an extremely difficult one to reach, our commitment to the audiences and artists participating in the festival is to have a first-class experience worthy of the great legacy of jazz and our great city.”
Ludlow said organizers were encouraged by the response from performers, fans and sponsors and remained committed to staging the festival in 2027.
“We are so grateful to all the artists — from our headliners to our musicians in the parks, many of whom went above and beyond to make this affordable to the community,” Ludlow said. “All current ticket holders for LA Jazz Festival events will be refunded in full within 30 days. We apologize deeply for this situation and vow to make this right over time.”
The festival had advertised performances by John Legend, Janelle Monáe, Parliament Funkadelic featuring George Clinton, Charlie Wilson, Raphael Saadiq, Original Koffee, Terrace Martin, Poncho Sanchez, Joey Alexander, Big Freedia and other artists during events scheduled throughout August, including the Aug. 22-23 Dockweiler Beach concerts.
One of the musicians scheduled to perform during the festival, Torrence Brannon-Reese, the leader of the Uptown New Orleans Brass Band, blasted festival organizers for disrespecting the musicians, the music and the community.
“I am deeply disappointed by the manner in which the cancellation of portions of the inaugural Los Angeles Jazz Festival was handled,” Brannon-Reese said in a statement emailed to The Wave. “As a New Orleans native and cultural preservationist, I considered it an honor to represent my hometown, my culture and the New Orleans brass band tradition at an event being promoted as an historic celebration of jazz in Los Angeles.”
In addition to being a musician, Brannon-Reese, is the founder and CEO of FAMLI, Inc., the Foundation for Arts, Mentoring, Leadership and Innovation, a nonprofit organization that offers mentoring and school-based art programs for youth while teaching them to accept personal responsibility for their lives. He said festival organizers hired his band to perform at a festival kickoff event at City Hall.
“When I was told the festival could not afford my normal fee, I reduced it my 50%,” Brannon-Reese said. “My musicians rehearsed, rearranged their schedules, prepared their uniforms and committed themselves to the engagement.
“As rumors of cancellations circulated, I repeatedly attempted to contact festival representatives for clarification.” he added. “Based upon the information I received, our City Hall performance was still happening. So because I had signed a contract and given my word, I showed up. My band showed up.”
Brannon-Reese said that when he and his band showed up at City Hall, no one there could tell them where to report. There were no festival representatives there.
“After realizing there would be no performance, I helped cover [my band members’] gasoline expenses and bought lunch for some of the band.”
For 15 years, Brannon-Reese produced the Malcolm X Festival. He said he knows what staging a large-scale festival requires.
“There [were] years when we didn’t know where all of the resources were going to come from,” he said. “But we found a way. We communicated. We respected the artists and community who trusted us.
“And we did everything within our power to deliver what we said we were going to deliver.”
Festival organizers announced an updated schedule July 31, a week before the scheduled start of the festival, that consolidated programming around the event’s marquee “Jazz on the Beach” concerts set for Aug. 22-23 at Dockweiler Beach.
Ludlow said in the July 31 announcement that organizers were consolidating several festival activities leading up to the Dockweiler Beach concerts.
“The energy and anticipation that has been building for this inaugural LA Jazz Festival has been beyond exciting,” Ludlow said when announcing the revised schedule. “With the goal of making every facet of the festival the ultimate fan experience, we are consolidating several of our activities leading up to our crown jewel event, the Jazz on the Beach concert weekend.”
Festival organizers had billed the LA Jazz Festival as a landmark cultural celebration they hoped would become one of the world’s largest international jazz festivals. It was promoted as a tourism and economic development initiative designed to celebrate jazz while supporting minority- and women-owned businesses.
Most of the artists scheduled to perform at canceled events were notified that portions of the festival had been postponed because of permitting and production challenges, according to media reports.
Ludlow announced plans for the festival at a news conference outside City Hall last February.
“This festival is intended to lift up our ancestors that came to this country in bondage, terrorized, brutalized,” Ludlow said at the time. “It’s also about celebrating the end to those last bastions of Jim Crow racism, the days we were denied access to public drinking fountains, public swimming pools and public beaches. From the beginning of this journey, we’ve been very intentional about telling the narrative of that human rights struggle called jazz.”
Ludlow was elected to the City Council in the 10th District in 2003. Two years later he resigned his seat to become head of the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor.
A year later, he pleaded guilty to a charge of conspiring to embezzle union funds for diverting more than $30,000 from a school employees union to his council election campaign. He was sentenced to five years probation and 2,000 hours of community service.
Brannon-Reese called upon Ludlow to publicly address what happened, address contractual commitments to affected artists and begin repairing the trust that has been damaged.
“Jazz was born from struggle, resilience and community,” he added. “The musicians who carry that cultural legacy deserve to be treated accordingly.”
