Reignited Wangaratta jazz festival flags its first hurrah

The Wangaratta Jazz and Blues Festival is making a robust four-day return this weekend and that owes much to the initiative shown by Andrew Nunn, its new chair.

Andrew Nunn, the new chair of the all-new board of voluntary directors of the Wangaratta Jazz and Blues Festival.

Mid-last year Andrew Nunn was drinking coffee in a cafe in Wangaratta, northeastern Victoria, when he saw a headline that made him thump the table. Wangaratta Jazz & Blues Festival, for more than three decades one of Australia’s most beloved jazz events, was having its plug pulled.

A final truncated version, billed as The Last Hurrah, would take place in November 2023, after which – for reasons including financial constraints and dwindling volunteer numbers – that would be it. The festival was done. “I thought, ‘What the hell are they doing?’,” says Nunn, 38, a local business owner and double bass player with jazz quartet The Daisies, which since forming in 2022 has gigged regularly around town.

“Because I play a bit of music, I would speak to venue owners and audiences and the general feeling was it should never have got to that point. Eventually I sent a text message to five or six key people, suggesting we meet to discuss keeping the festival alive, and 35 people turned up.”

That Wangaratta Jazz and Blues Festival is making a robust four-day return this weekend – in an all-Australian program headlined by vocalist/trumpeter Vince Jones, singer and Songbook interpreter Hetty Kate and hard funk trio Cookin’ On 3 Burners – owes much to the initiative shown by Nunn, the new chair of its all-new board of voluntary directors.

As it does the determination of the Wangaratta community, which has rallied to save an event long celebrated nationwide for its roster of established and rising stars, its prestigious National Jazz Award (think the antipodean equivalent of the Herbie Hancock Jazz Institute Competition), and the tourist boost afforded the 30,000-population rural Victorian city.

Everyone, from Chilean-born saxophonist Melissa Aldana to Grammy-winning US crooner Kurt Elling, has swung into this destination festival, which by the mid-2010s was drawing crowds in the tens of thousands, many of them returnees.

But following Adrian Jackson’s 27-year stint as founding artistic director, WJBF became increasingly beleaguered: there were resignations. Sackings. Funding problems. An arguable lack of expertise. 2019’s festival was cancelled. The Covid pandemic forced the 2020 festival online. Floods marred the 2022 event. And 2023’s Last Hurrah was to be precisely that.

But in the same way the jazz genre tends to stay current by continually absorbing elements from elsewhere, the 2024 Wangaratta Festival of Jazz and Blues is returning, rebranded and refreshed, with 40 shows spread across 13 venues around the region.

With new artistic director Serge Carnovale, owner of longstanding inner-city Melbourne venue Paris Cat Jazz Club, Nunn has rung in changes including jettisoning day/weekend passes in favour of individual ticketing; favouring indoor venues, with their own insurance and in-house audio and PA equipment, and; limiting the free outdoor community stage to a Saturday daytime event at the Wangaratta Bowls Club green.

“A lot of people would just go to the free event, which was expensive to put on, then not go to anything else. There was no avenue for the festival to make money except through sponsorship and government grants,” says Nunn. “Right from early on I said I wanted to make the festival self-sustaining, that any government money we got would be the cherry on top.”

The festival’s new-look website features a list of more than 160 donors (“A good many are Wangaratta people my own age, kids of the first generation of festival goers”) and sponsors, including Railyard Restaurant Cafe, a new venue and the site of that original meet-up of 35 community-spirited locals.

New board member, philanthropy specialist Sarah Thompson (“A key recruit”), has helped secure grants from Music Victoria and Visit Victoria. A $52,453 grant under the federal government’s Festivals Australia program was announced in June, by which time it was too late to schedule any international acts.

No matter: “It’s our relaunch year and we have an incredibly strong and diverse Australian line-up. We have the National Jazz Awards highlighting the saxophone. We’ve got an upbeat closing night party that will bring in a younger crowd. We’ve got the support, the volunteers, the energy, the know-how.”

Nunn flashes a smile. “We’ve got this.”

Wangaratta Festival of Jazz and Blues runs from November 1-4.