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Frank Malfitano, right, with B.B. King in 2014.
(Photo: Courtesy Syracuse Jazz Festival)With Frank Malfitano, founder of the Syracuse Jazz Festival, conversations don’t go in straight lines. They twist and turn, head down unexpected paths and roads less traveled, much like the music he has been presenting to his hometown for the past 40 years.
Energetic and thoughtful, Malfitano defies his 80 years on this planet, showing the ambition of a man half his age who has at the same time earned every ounce of the wisdom of his years. After adding to the festival’s executive team this year and adjusting his own role as well as a succession plan, Malfitano has been laser focused on making this anniversary edition special.
All of that culminates in this summer’s 40th anniversary of the Syracuse Jazz Festival, complete with new digs at the Beak & Skiff Apple Hill Campus, an apple orchard and performance venue that presents a variety of indoor and outdoor concerts in the hills of Lafayette, New York, just 10 miles south of Syracuse.
Malfitano sat down for a sprawling Zoom call with Frank Alkyer, DownBeat’s editor and publisher, about the fest’s history and future. The following is just a taste of two Franks in conversation.
Frank Alkyer: How did you start this thing?
Frank Malfitano: I used to go to Newport. I went to the Ann Arbor Blues & Jazz Festival. I went to a festival out on an island in Toronto. And about 1974 the light bulb went off. I looked and I said, “Well, there are bands, there’s a stage, there’s a sound system. I can do this.” What did I know? I knew nothing.
And one day, a bunch of local musicians came to me, and they said, “Frank, we want to do a jazz festival. Can you help us? Because we know you love jazz. You come to see our bands, and we know you know how to market and advertise. Can you help us put something together?” I said, “Well, what do you want?” And they said, “Well, we want a nice club. We want a packed house, and we want good advertising.” I said, “Fine,” and that’s how it happened.
That was the catalyst. We did it in a club — on a Sunday — that a friend of mine owned. It was a disco. It was a big, huge dance club. OK, 1,500 people came, and the fire department shut us down, and I said, “We might be on to something. So we did a bunch of indoor versions. And then finally, the next year, we said we got to take this outside, and that’s how the outdoor festival was born.
Alkyer: Where was the first site?
Malfitano: Song Mountain ski resort. Man, it looked like Europe. We were on the side of a mountain, looking down at the ski lodge with the stage in front. It was spectacular. It was beautiful, but didn’t work as a festival site. It worked in the sense that 1,000 people, 1,500 people, maybe, came. The same amount of people we had in the club, but it was a little too far away, and people weren’t ready to travel to a site they hadn’t used before.
We went to a park that was an established site. They had The Byrds, Joe Cocker, a bunch of people. And I was the first jazz event, and it did well. We were there for five or six years, and then I said, I want to move the festival downtown and make it free. So I went to the mayor, I knocked on his door. I said, “Listen, I want to move the festival downtown to Clinton Square,” an urban square in the center of town. He said, “What do you need?” I said, “Money.”
And then it just exploded, 10 years later, we outgrew it because we had Ray Charles, Pete Fountain, Diana Krall, David Sanborn and Dave Brubeck — you know, just a few names for you.
The square probably held, I don’t know, between 5,000 and 10,000 people. We had 35,000. So we had to leave.
Alkyer: When you think of Newport, when you think of Monterey, when you think of the festivals that have been around a long time, they don’t generally switch sites so often.
Malfitano: We have moved, and we have relocated on a number of occasions. Part of that is me. Part of that feels like there’s a shelf life for venues in this market, and you have to change it up, because otherwise it becomes like the New York State Fair, and everybody goes, “No, I’m not going to go this year. It’s the same old thing.” You know what I mean? So there’s a constant need for reinvention, reimagining, envisioning. And another part is sometimes I get ticked off at the venue operators, and I’ve had enough of them, and sometimes they’ve had enough of me.
Alkyer: Here’s something I want to get into with you. [The music on your phone] can be as broad as everything under the sun. And that’s truly what you do as a festival, because it isn’t always a jazz festival.
Malfitano: All music appeals to me, and I see a connection between all of the styles and disciplines of music. And I see the primary connection is that this is American music. We did this. We gifted this to the world. This is the best thing, arguably, we ever did. And so I think people have broad tastes. I love everything. I love soul. I love jazz. I love funk. I love blues. I love folk. I love rock. I don’t differentiate.
If you put one kind of thing up there all day for three days, some people are going to tune out. It’s going to bore them. I want to entertain them. DB
Editor’s Note: This interview took place before the Syracuse lineup was announced. Malfitano and his team will be entertaining audiences for the 40th anniversary with the likes of Trombone Shorty & Orleans Avenue, Tower of Power, Gunhild Carling, Nathan & the Zydeco Cha Chas, Dumpstaphunk Plays Sly, The USAF Airmen of Note, Orange Juice and Hejira.
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