The University of Idaho’s Annual Jazz Festival is known for its concerts, workshops and of course, jazz. It is one of the largest educational Jazz Festivals in the country, attracting at least 5,000 students. As universities move to online learning, the festival will be held online compared to past events being held in-person.
“It is 100% virtual,” Orchestra and Double Bass Instructor for the Lionel Hampton School of Music, Joshua Skinner said. “I proposed a couple of different plans, and we decided virtual was best just not knowing how the current world pandemic was going to impact things.”
This year the festival will have its workshops and concerts virtually. This year though, there won’t be as many workshops as there were last year, and instead, there will only be one hosted virtually every hour.
“We couldn’t keep the exact form of everything that we normally would have on campus,” Skinner said. “It just was not physically possible. So, what decided is to try to offer the highest quality resources that we could by reducing that down to get people involved with each of those.”
Skinner said the festival committee knew they wouldn’t be able to host big band concerts this year, as it would be difficult for them to do remotely due to size restrictions in certain areas.
“We’ve for years recorded the concerts as an archival component of what we do with the international jazz collections here on campus,” Skinner said.
On Feb. 25, Skinner will be talking about the history of the Jazz Festival and its relationship with Lionel Hampton. Members of the big band will show their favorite clips of Hampton at the festival and will talk about Hampton’s achievements at the festival.
Skinner said that some concerts will be live on Zoom for viewers, and performances will feature groups such as Säje and vocalist Camille Thurman.
While it might not seem like the same, with no in-person events, no sitting in on jazz performances from other schools, and no big band live, Skinner hopes that they will still be able to keep the magic of jazz fest alive.
Skinner, staff and student performers were disappointed to not have the festival in-person. However, Skinner understood that they had to adapt to the pandemic going on. They still wanted to provide a great show to the people and keep the spirit of jazz alive. Skinner is hopeful that there will be an in-person Jazz Festival for 2022.
For those wanting a schedule for the concerts or the workshops, they can go to https://www.uidaho.edu/class/jazzfest
Ryan Hill can be reached at arg-life @uidaho.edu