Outpouring of support for Healdsburg Jazz Festival

In late July, the festival's five-member board decided to put the event on hiatus, explaining that it has operated at a $30,000 deficit for the past three years. The board also eliminated the position of artistic director Jessica Felix, who founded the festival in 1999.

In response, dozens of written comments — ranging from outrage to sorrow to support for pure jazz — quickly amassed on the festival's website, www.healdsburgjazzfestival.org.

New York jazz pianist George Cables caught the general tone with his posting: “Removing Jessica Felix from the Healdsburg Jazz Festival is an impossibility. Jessica Felix is the Healdsburg Jazz Festival.”

The comments were removed in early August. Now the festival's site bears a message thanking the public for its comments and inviting people to send email directly to info@healdsburgjazzfestival.org.

Felix has created a new web site, www.healdsburgjazz.com, where the original expressions of support can be read and jazz festival fans continue to post their sentiments. The site also includes a petition form calling for the revival of the festival and reinstatement of Felix as its director. More than 100 petitions have been filled out and emailed back to the site so far.

Felix declined comment on what she'll do next, but has stated in the past that she hopes to continue presenting live jazz in Healdsburg.

The postings were peppered with outrage from renowned jazz musicians from around the country, including Cables, who contends both the festival and Felix are indispensable and inseparable.

“The Healdsburg Jazz Festival was her vision,” said Cables, who has appeared at the event more than half a dozen times during its 12-year-history. The festival drew as many as 5,000 fans a year.

“It came out of years and years of her involvement with the music, her passion and dedication. The musicians know her,” he said by phone this week.

Top jazz names accepted Felix's invitations to play in Healdsburg, even though she couldn't pay what they normally earned, Cables added.

Another musician posting a strong protest was drummer, percussionist and educator Babatunde Lea of Gettysburg, Penn., who worked with Felix to establish the annual Operation Jazz Band program.

The festival board has stated that Operation Jazz Band — a weeklong music workshop for Healdsburg area fifth-graders, ending with a public concert — is the one event it still plans to present next summer. Lea said he hasn't committed to doing the program next summer and wants to have further discussions with the festival board.

“I think the whole festival should continue, and Jessica should continue as director,” Lea said by phone. “She has poured her blood, sweat and tears into it for 12 years.”

Comments posted also included one from Kathryn M. Martin of Santa Rosa Systems, a major festival sponsor since 2007, and donor of $25,000 to last June's event. She ended by saying that the company could no longer support the festival if Felix was not a part of it.

Live jazz performances at the Hotel Healdsburg and Affronti cafe, presented under the Healdsburg Jazz Festival banner and booked in advance by Felix before her departure, continue through the end of August.

In its announcement last month, the festival board said it ultimately hoped to revive the festival in some form.

Board chairwoman Pat Templin declined comment on Felix, but said the board hopes to have an announcement soon about its future plans.

You can reach Staff Writer Dan Taylor at 521-5243 or dan.taylor@pressdemocrat.com. See his ARTS blog at http://arts.blogs.pressdemocrat.com.