The Swanage Jazz Festival 2024 Report Part One

Overall, though this “summers” weather has been boringly wet, Swanage Jazz was by and large a mercifully dry weekend. I would like to offer many thanks to Paul Kelly and the committee for keeping the festival running for yet another year.

The facility and content of the festival have also improved since Paul Kelly and the committee took over running it, and what looked likely to the termination of the 30 year plus event after Nigel Price could no longer see his way in continuing its revival. 

I want this year to split my report into two, and mention the actual music I listened to in part two.

So, first off, the geography of the event. 

More music was to be had in more places, but some of the placement was not of the best.

The two main marquees on Sandpit Field had their sound stages much too close together and they did interfere quite audibly with each other. The more acoustic music was usually drowned out by the more rock bass and drum orientated music. It would be better if the marquees were turned round such that the sound stages were at opposite ends of the field.

The noise interference was magnified this year as more Rock/Weather Report inspired music was played and the time programming of this overall wasn’t great. More about this later.

It was very good that Sandpit Field came back to being a proper meeting hub this year. Something that has been missing in recent years. 

It was also good that there were more food outlets in this area than before which has been missing since the rebooting of the festival. A bit more seating to allow that food to be eaten would be a good addition for next year. More staff in the bar serving areas would be of benefit, as the long queue often meant missing the first 10 minutes of a gig one had arrived on time to see.

The two placements (one at either end of the field) of multi sex toilets was a good idea, but can I suggest that the Portaloos hired had more room between the door and the toilet itself. There was insufficient room inside to manoeuvre, especially as sometimes one had a knapsack to cope with as well, and their stability was a bit dubious, they definitely rocked!

There was more music to listen to than before, but the gaps between each set in any individual marquee (usually 1 hour) were too long. The concept of using Sandpit field as a hub was great, but little use was made to put free music on between the programmed and paid for music. The open sided tented area could have been used to better advantage. I only ever saw it used for Yoga classes. Putting Youth Bands in there would have helped young people have the opportunity to perform to the public, and would fill the gap whilst the main gigs were set up.

A small point about the printed program, given out to all ticket holders. Nicely produced, but could we have the times of each concert printed alongside the names of the players at each venue please? It was a good idea to have the overall colour coded timetable, but when you are actually in venue, it was necessary to turn the pages back and forth to find what time things were in the place you were in! Also, I never did find the musicians profiles, no longer in the printed program, and difficult to find (could they be found?) online whilst out and about.

Example of Timetable

Who is playing, but not when

It was great to be able to stroll and chat to friends who come from different parts of the country and come together to celebrate and talk about jazz, the music we love, as we used to do. The Sandpit Field was always good for this. It might be worth considering for the future to have some of the more traditional jazz program located in Marquee 2. This used to be the case, and not all jazz lovers like only one style, and a bit of cross fertilization would be a good thing. Being easily able to move from one style to another without a complete change of location would be nice.

I commented above about the loud rock emphasis. Friday three of the four Marquee 1 events were very similar. Loud drum and bass is rock, not swing or jazz. This wasn’t helped by the poor sound balance for this music. The rhythm instruments were too loud which meant the balance emphasis on the front line was diminished.

The tribute to Steve Wonder was obviously appreciated by many Steve Wonder fans, but the sound was deafening and ill balanced, and the singer (Noel McCalla), to me, a lifelong jazz fan, was not an endearing character. Publicly denigrating the sound engineers wasn’t funny or sensible. Thanks to Vasilis Xenopoulos, a late replacement in the lineup for Derek Nash, the event was kinda OK. When it came to the announcements at the end, the microphone used by the steward, and  therefore the one that had been the singers, was obviously not turned up enough even though the sound level for the evening was vastly too loud.

The Audience, as seen by Vasilis on Sunday.

Part Two, my thoughts on the music I heard, will come later in the week.