George Wein « Art Works

April four, 2013

By Josephine Reed

George Wein. Photograph by Tom Pich

In this week’s podcast, we fulfill 2005 NEA Jazz Master here George Wein, who has been a famous presence in the performance entire world for above sixty several years. In 1954, he basically invented the idea of the outdoor jazz festival when he launched the initial one at any time held in the United States in Newport, Rhode Island. The relaxation, as they say, is history. Wein went on to play an important position in creating several other domestic and worldwide festivals, such as the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival, far more generally known as Jazz Fest, and the yearly Grande Parade du Jazz in Good, France. Branching out a bit, he also established the now yearly Newport People Festival.

In 1969, Wein recognized Festival Productions, Inc., which experienced workplaces in six cities and developed hundreds of musical occasions internationally every calendar year. In 2007, at the age of eighty one, Wein determined to just take a break and offered his generation company. But two several years later, when the successor organization was headed for bankruptcy, Wein jumped back into the game. He was established that Newport’s founding jazz and people festivals carry on. To that conclude, in 2010, he launched Newport Festivals Basis, a not-for-revenue whose mission is to preserve the Newport Jazz and Folks Festivals fiscally feasible and musically vibrant for foreseeable future generations of audio lovers.

Given all Wein has accomplished as an impresario, it is easy to neglect which is he’s also a skilled jazz pianist who even now performs with his group, The Newport All-Stars. In simple fact, again in the fifties, he would sometimes sit in for a tune or even a established with some of the jazz greats who performed at his club, Storyville.

In this excerpt from the podcast, Wein describes the evening at Storyville when he played piano in a set with the legendary saxophonist, Lester Youngâ€"who was known to absolutely everyone as “Prez.” [1:fifty four]

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[transcript]

Tags: George Wein, Nationwide Endowment for the Arts, NEA, NEA Jazz Masters, Newport, Newport All-Stars, Newport People Festival, Newport Jazz Festival, podcast, Rhode Island

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