The Portland Jazz Festival has issued a press release announcing the end of the Portland Jazz Festival.
Portland Jazz Festival has ceased operations ending a five-year span of presenting a world class jazz festival each February in Portland. Since opening February 2004 with Wayne Shorter, Portland Jazz Festival has presented such artists as Ornette Coleman, Cecil Taylor, Chick Corea & Gary Burton, Dianne Reeves, McCoy Tyner & Ravi Coltrane, and many others. Over the past few years, an array of international artists, including Trygve Seim and Tord Gustavsen (Norway), Tomasz Stanko (Poland), Nik Bartsch’s Ronin (Switzerland), Amina Figarova (Holland), and Diego Ramirez (Mexico), have been prominently spotlighted.
Operations and planning for the 2009 February event could not continue because of a decline in funding and sponsorship support. New sponsors could not be found and other short falls accumulated making it impossible to survive on ticket sale projections and related forms of earned revenue. Even with the anticipation of the 09 festival dedicated to the 70th anniversary of Blue Note Records, recent attempts to develop support throughout the community were not successful.
Click here to read the press release from PDX Jazz.