George Wein (pronounced Ween) (October 3, 1925 – September 13, 2021) was an American jazz promoter, pianist, and producer. He was the founder of the Newport Jazz Festival, which is held every summer in Newport, Rhode Island. He also co-founded the Newport Folk Festival with Pete Seeger and Theodore Bikel and was instrumental in the founding of the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival.
George Theodore Wein was born in Lynn, Massachusetts, on October 3, 1925. His father, Barnet, worked as a ear, nose, and throat doctor; his mother, Ruth, was an amateur piano player. Both of his parents were Jewish. Wein was raised in Newton and began learning the piano when he was eight. He developed a passion for jazz while attending Newton High School, where he formed his first jazz band. He studied at Boston University, where he led a small group which played professionally around Boston. After serving in the U.S. Army during World War II, he graduated from Boston University's College of Liberal Arts in 1950.After graduation, Wein opened the Storyville jazz club and established the Storyville record label. He also taught a course at Boston University on the history of jazz.
In 1954, Louis and Elaine Lorillard invited Wein to organize a festival in their hometown of Newport, Rhode Island, with funding to be provided by them; the festival was the first outdoor jazz festival in the United States and became an annual tradition in Newport.
Wein was subsequently instrumental in the founding of a number of festivals in other cities, including the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival, and the Playboy Jazz Festival in Los Angeles, and established the Newport Folk Festival. In the 1960s he set up Festival Productions, a company dedicated to promoting large-scale jazz events.
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| Duke Ellington, George Wein & Erroll Garner |
In 1970 Wein’s inaugural New Orleans event helped refocus attention on the music of the city that had been the idiom’s most significant cradle. Four years later he revamped the established festival in Nice, re-titling it the Grande Parade du Jazz and relocating it in the Jardins de Cimiez, above the city, where artists including Davis, Gillespie, Berry, BB King and Herbie Hancock were presented in the multistage format he had pioneered. Wein’s decision to add rock bands such as Blood, Sweat and Tears, Jethro Tull and the Allman Brothers to the bill led to riots in 1969 and 1971, horrifying the city fathers. That precipitated the relocation to New York, where Miles Davis’s much heralded return from a long sabbatical in 1981 was one of a series of events that kept the festival in the news.
Wein pioneered the idea of corporate sponsorship for his events. His Schlitz Salute to Jazz and Kool Jazz Festival were the first jazz events to put sponsors in the title: Schlitz beer and Kool cigarettes. Festival Productions organizes the JVC Jazz Festival at Newport and JVC Jazz Festivals in New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, Paris, Warsaw, and Tokyo. Other title sponsors of Festival Productions events include Mellon Bank, Essence magazine, Verizon, Ben & Jerry's, and Dunkin' Donuts. By the 1980s, he was producing more than 50 major events a year, making him the world's leading jazz promoter.
Wein’s own highly competent piano playing had been refined by a few lessons with the great Teddy Wilson and he continued to perform at home and abroad with a group called the Newport All Stars, playing mainstream jazz with a changing membership including some of his favourite musicians, such as the trumpeter Buck Clayton, the cornettist Ruby Braff and the clarinettist Pee Wee Russell. His less celebrated talent as a vocalist was showcased on a 1954 album, Wein, Women and Song.
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| Bobby Hackett, Louis Armstrong & Wein |
Wein received a wide array of honours for his work with jazz concerts. He received the Patron of the Arts Award from the Studio Museum of Harlem in 1995, and was recognized with an Impact Award from the AARP in 2004. He was decorated with France's Légion d'honneur and appointed a Commandeur de L'Ordre des Arts et Lettres (Commander of the Order of Arts and Literature) by the French government. He has been honoured at the White House by two American presidents, Jimmy Carter in 1978 and Bill Clinton in 1993. In 2005, he was named a "Jazz Master" by the National Endowment for the Arts. His autobiography, Myself Among Others: A Life in Music was singled out as 2004's best book about jazz by the Jazz Journalists Association. Wein received honorary degrees from the Berklee College of Music and Rhode Island College of Music, and was a lifetime Honorary Trustee of Carnegie Hall.
In 1959 he married Joyce Alexander (1928–2005), whom he met at a Bechet concert in Boston in 1947 when she was writing a jazz column for her college newspaper. The couple established The George and Joyce Wein Collection of African-American Art. Wein died at his apartment home in Manhattan on September 13, 2021, at age 95.
(Edited from Wikipedia, The Guardian & IMDb)