Jazzin’ Up the Valley

WOODLAND HILLS —  The San Fernando Valley has long been known as a center for world-class jazz musicians--but more as a place to live than to perform live.

A group of veteran performers and promoters want to change all that. Today they will announce the first annual San Fernando Valley Jazz Festival, a six-week series of concerts, competitions and educational programs set to begin April 6.

“I have lived here since 1971,” said Marty Cooper, a promoter who two decades ago worked on the first Playboy Jazz Festival that takes place annually at the Hollywood Bowl. “And I have always felt it was sad there wasn’t a big venue here in the Valley, where these world class musicians could play.”

In its first year, the festival will hardly rival the world-famous Playboy festival or the Long Beach Jazz Festival that is held outdoors near the Queen Mary.

The Valley fest, which will debut with an afternoon concert at the Jewish Home for the Aging in Reseda, will take place at numerous venues, including the Warner Center Pavilion in Woodland Hills, El Portal Theater in North Hollywood and Cal State Northridge.

Local musicians slated to perform include Buddy Collette, a North Hollywood resident known for his technical mastery of the saxophone and his abilities as a teacher; jazz clarinetist Abe Most of Encino, and the Ink Spots vocal group.

The biggest event planned for the festival is Jazz on the Lake, a pair of concerts on the weekend of May 17 that will feature 60 musicians performing 45 hours of music. Those concerts will take place on the shore of Lake Balboa at the Sepulveda Dam Recreation Area in Encino.

Several of the festival events will be free. The Jazz on the Lake concerts will be the most expensive, with tickets going for $17.50 per day or $30 for both days, according to festival officials.

Promoters say that all proceeds from the festival will benefit four local groups: the Starlight Foundation that helps seriously ill children; H.E.L.P., an organization that aids young victims of abuse and neglect; the Woodland Hills Chamber of Commerce’s programs to provide school grants and combat graffiti, and the Los Angeles Department of Recreation and Parks.

Cooper said that one of the festival’s main aims is to bring the music to new listeners who don’t realize Los Angeles has a rich jazz heritage, past and present.

“People are always looking backward and saying ‘wasn’t it great when we had the Beverly Cavern,’ and even further back to Central Avenue and the Dunbar Hotel,” he said, referring to the local jazz scene of decades past.

“What’s exciting is that we have more places to hear more forms of jazz than we’ve ever had in this city.”

And hearing it live, Cooper thinks, makes all the difference.

“I think jazz is something that is best appreciated in person,” he said. “To me, a good jazz musician is somebody who connects to his audience much better in person than on compact disc or radio.”