The Lionel Hampton Jazz Festival started in 1967 and for the last 53 years the festival has celebrated the culture and art of jazz music. The festival does not only celebrate music, it also celebrates other forms of art. 

Multiple art forms make up what people first see and recognize about Jazz Fest. 

One of the most recognized things about Jazz Fest is the poster, which showcases the artistic celebration this festival embodies. 

Every year as Jazz Fest rolls around the corner, a new person is asked to create the festival’s poster.

This year a University of Idaho alumnus and painting professor, Aaron Cordell Johnson, was asked to design it. 

Johnson has lived in Moscow since 2008 and has seen the festival through the years.  

The festival poster is something out of the ordinary for Johnson, because he typically does landscape paintings.  

“It was enjoyable to do something out of my normal, what I typically post I mean. I look at it as a painter, no matter what I am painting,” Johnson said. “The challenges — composition, value, color, design — all of those problems are going to be the same whether I’m making a poster, a landscape painting, a figurative painting or an abstraction of all those things.”

The process of painting

Johnson said the process of designing the poster took thousands of sketches, hundreds of photos and hours of deliberating colors, text and fonts.

Johnson said he sees the poster design process the same way he sees painting. Some points of deliberation were: Did it have to be vertical? Did Lionel Hampton have to be a part of it? Was there a certain color scheme or font? 

Johnson worked with Joshua Skinner, the Lionel Hampton Jazz Festival manager, on answering these questions. Skinner’s answer: It’s up to you. 

“They basically said, ‘You’re the artist and we trust you to come up with some designs,’” Johnson said. 

To find ideas for the 2020 Jazz Fest poster, he looked at old photographs from previous Jazz Fests.

“(Skinner) sent me a link with a ridiculous amount of photographs,” Johnson said. “It was like 30,000 images or something. I was trying to find an image that matched a thought.” 

When deciding what photo to take inspiration from, Johnson said the color scheme played an important role.

“There was a theme of purple and green lights,” Johnson said. “Oddly enough, it was about the same time Disney+ came out, and my children were watching Fantasia. I did get a little inspiration, color wise, from watching 

After coming up with multiple ideas and creating 3-by-5-inch sketches, Johnson said he went back to Skinner for final approval.

“I thought Skinner gave the best jazz answer possible which was, ‘I dig it,’” Johnson said.

The final poster has the hands of a performer in the middle of a show, with the hands going either up or down to the rhythm of a song.

“It’s a former performer, but I don’t know who the guy is because it’s silhouetted,” Johnson said. “You wouldn’t be able to look through the photographs and find what I used because I took inspiration from that and manipulated it to look the way I wanted it to.”

The finalized poster is hanging in the Reflections Gallery in the Idaho Student Union Building, along with posters from previous years, and will remain there until Sunday.

A community festival

When Jazz Fest rolls around, Moscow comes alive with the sound of jazz and the creation of art. The town takes inspiration from the creativity Jazz Fest brings to not only campus but to Moscow.

An example of the festival being reflected in the Moscow community is the newest exhibit at the Third Street Gallery.

On Feb. 19, the City of Moscow held an artist reception for “Jazz Hands,” an art exhibit at Third Street Gallery inspired by jazz.

The gallery featured artwork from UI alumni, professors, students & other members of the community. The reception was accompanied by performances from DancersDrummersDreamers (DDD).

City of Moscow’s Art Program Manager, Megan Cherry, organized the “Jazz Hands” exhibit.

Cherry helps create spaces for artists to show off their work and said she has the best job in the world.

“I love (the city council chambers) because a lot of important decisions for the city get made in that room and every time people walk in there to guide policy for the city, they walk past here,” Cherry said. “Part of my job is to make sure that there’s great art to walk past.”

The “Jazz Hands” Exhibit is open until April 3.

The artists behind it

Bobby Meador, a musician with DDD, played guitar alongside dancers at the gallery reception.

“They told me to start with something jazzy, so I went blues oriented and then just made everything up from there,” Meador said. “The festival is about bringing musicians together.”

Abby Shepard, a dancer with DDD, said the idea behind these kinds of jams is communication between musicians and dancers. She performed among other dancers at the event while Meador played guitar.

“It’s all improvised,” Shepard said. “(Meador) just played whatever came to mind.”

Aside from DDD, artists who created work for the event were in attendance at the artists reception.

Britani Phelps, a graphic designer in Moscow and UI alumna, was one of those artists. She said the culture that started jazz is what inspired her piece.

“I just want people to remember where jazz came from and to have a deeper appreciation for it,” Phelps said. “Especially during the festival, I want people to have the original creators in the back of their mind.”

David Janssen Jr., a professor in the Fine Arts Department at Washington State University, said he appreciates the festival being held in February, during Black History Month.

“These jazz festivals get coined with certain musicians’ names, and it’s typically because of their impact on that genre of music,” Janssen said. “With Lionel Hampton, he was one of the biggest living jazz musicians, so it was huge.”

Julia Ames, a graphic designer in Moscow and an artist in the “Jazz Hands” exhibit, said she grew up going to Jazz Fest.

“I remember hearing Roy Hargrove when he first started touring at the Lionel Hampton Jazz Festival,” Ames said.

Hargove was an American jazz musician who played the trumpet. Hargove played at Jazz Fest in 1992 and went on to receive two Grammys. The first was for best Latin jazz performance in 1998 for the music project “Habana”. The second was for best jazz instrumental album in 2003 for “Directions in Music”.

To find inspiration for her pieces, Ames said she played Hargrove’s music and tried to draw it.

Both Ames and Janssen said it was interesting to see how the other artists interpreted the call to action.

“What’s great about music and art is that it brings everybody together — there’s such a deep fan base for this stuff,” Janssen said. “We keep thinking it’ll die out, and it keeps coming back. Jazz is really resilient in that way — it’s going to be here forever.”

Angela Palermo and Kali Nelson can be reached at [email protected]