MAY 3, 2018 // 3
Seaside Jazz Festival goes on hiatus
Event celebrated
35th year in February
By R.J. MARX
SEASIDE SIGNAL
A
fter 35 years in Sea-
side, the Seaside Jazz
Festival will be taking
a “hiatus,” according to an
announcement by director
Dennis Brodigan and former
co-directors Ruth Johnson and
Judy Shook.
The organizers hope to
“reevaluate its positive impact
on the community,” according
to Johnson. “Many volunteers
have kept this event going for
all these years and no one has
ever received a salary,” she
coast
said. “It was the love of the
music and the community that
kept volunteers and jazz aficio-
nados coming back.”
The event, held as recent-
ly as February, brought jazz
performers from around the
country to play at venues
throughout town. The festival
provided support to local jazz
education through the Light-
house Jazz Society, including
summer camp scholarships.
Once known as the Oregon
Dixieland Jubilee, the Seaside
Jazz Festival brought perform-
ers in a variety of jazz-related
genres to the stage of the
Seaside Civic & Convention
Center, Elks Lodge and local
stages.
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“When the festival started, it
was all Dixieland or traditional
jazz, the kind of jazz you’d
hear in New Orleans,” Johnson
said in 2014. “Over the last
three years it’s changed a bit.
We still have the traditional
jazz, but we’re bringing in
some music that you wouldn’t
necessarily call traditional,
though it’s all derived from
jazz in one way or another.”
This year Johnson and
Shook passed the baton to
festival “director-in-training,”
Dennis Brodigan.
“While it is hoped we will
return in 2020, the future of
this event has yet to be deter-
mined,” organizers reported on
the event’s website. CW
COAST WEEKEND EDITOR
ERICK BENGEL
CALENDAR COORDINATOR
REBECCA HERREN
CONTRIBUTORS
JANAE EASLON
R.J. MARX
NANCY McCARTHY
BRENNA VISSER
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FILE PHOTO
Dave Bennett and the Memphis Speed Kings perform at the 2016 Seaside Jazz Festival.