Wangaratta jazz festival breathes new life into prestigious awards

After a hiatus, the Wangaratta Festival of Jazz & Blues will return at a time musicians need it most

Kristin Berardi was the most recent vocal winner of the National Jazz Award, in 2012.

Step forward and take a bow, Wangaratta, in regional Victoria.

With gigs cancelled in a number of states due to the coronavirus, Australian jazz musicians have strived to salvage careers by giving ticketed concerts online — but they have in the main been musicians with established careers. For younger aspiring jazz musicians still trying to find a footing in the pre-coronavirus thriving Australian jazz scene, there have been fewer opportunities to push forward. But one opportunity has presented itself with the announcement that the Australian National Jazz Awards are now open after a two-year absence.

The National Jazz Awards have been an essential part of the Wangaratta Festival of Jazz and Blues. They have been held every year over the festival’s 30-year history except last year when the festival was cancelled for financial and other reasons. The award is prestigious, guaranteed to boost the winning jazz musician’s reputation and career. The prize includes a recording session at Pughouse Studios in Melbourne. Previous winners include singer Kristin Berardi, trumpeter Scott Tinkler, guitarist James Muller and saxophonist Julien Wilson.

The requirements are demanding and the competition is keen. Contestants have to submit a recording of three pieces including an Australian composition. For audiences the finals are often a festival highlight, performed before a large audience that often reaches lockout point. The announcement that the competition will go ahead comes as the festival board gets set to weigh up the impact of the Victorian government’s latest coronavirus restrictions on its resolve up to now to stage a live festival before a live audience. The board is due to meet this week to assess under what conditions the festival might go ahead. It is a tough call for the board given last year’s absence and the need to maintain momentum. It is also the festival’s 30th anniversary with plans under way to celebrate this milestone.

Guitarist James Muller was joint winner with Stephen Magnusson of the NJA in 2000 at the Wangaratta festival.

The decision to go ahead with the National Jazz Awards was welcomed by Dr Tony Gould, jazz pianist, former Monash University professor and a former awards chair. The awards “have provided gifted young Australian jazz musicians opportunities they likely would never have got without them”, he said. “Not having the awards for the last two years is, I think, an unfortunate blow to the sector. Ongoing contribution to the community of the extraordinary young musicians who have taken part in the awards should never be underestimated.’’

Each year the National Jazz Award competition covers a different category of instrument. This year it is the voice. The awards project co-ordinator is American-born Michele Bauer, artistic director of the Chill Out Festival in Daylesford in Victoria. She previously ran the Bluegrass awards in Louisville, Kentucky. She said of last year’s cancellation: “It is obviously a missed opportunity for some people; however, I think it probably would have given some people another year of practice to revise. We are happy that the jazz awards can go ahead and honour the festival’s 30th anniversary celebration.’’

There are a few changes to the awards this year. The age range of up to 35 years has been lifted to 36 to include any musicians who might having been disadvantaged by turning 35 last year when there was no competition to enter. This year the competition is open only to musicians from Australia and New Zealand. The judges in previous years included both Australian musicians and headline overseas jazz artists such as American singer Kurt Elling. This year the judges will all be Australian because of flight restrictions. Another difference is that the finals will be streamed online as well as performed live before an audience in Wangaratta. “It will obviously be a reduced audience because of COVID but we are hoping that by October we will have even a small live audience as well,” said Bauer.

The festival’s general manager, Leanne Mulcahy, said there had been a fair bit of inquiry from the public about what is happening with the festival.

Plans for the festival have had to be constantly revised in response to changing external circumstances. “(The board) hasn’t taken the position to cancel the festival. The board has been positioning itself to be able to deliver a festival in accordance with whatever the restrictions are at the time,’’ said Mulcahy.

Meanwhile, in the jazz mecca of New York, famous jazz clubs such as Birdland and Smalls are in dire straits, struggling to keep up with having to pay property rent during closures. The New York Independent Venue Association said landlords on average could already claim $150,000 per venue in arrears and 80 per cent of venues have no agreed arrangement with their landlords to allow them to stay afloat: “We are disastrously close to losing New York’s cultural lifeblood.’’

The jazz clubs have joined a national Save Our Venues campaign to support two bills before Congress, a Save our Stages Act and a Restart Act.

Entries close August 31. Go to wangarattajazz.com/national-jazz-awards