Minnesota Festival Support
ACHF Cultural Heritage
The variety and number of Minnesota artists that are presented through festivals increases. The number of Minnesotans who experience the arts through festivals increases. We measured and documented the number and range of festival artists, as represented in the festival program and register of artists.
A wide variety and range of Minnesota jazz artists performed at the 2012 Festival: from up-and-coming jazz musicians James Buckley and Zacc Harris to established jazz greats Irv Williams and Debbie Duncan; from straight-ahead to Dixieland to avant garde; from traditional jazz instruments (piano, bass, drums, woodwinds, brass) to new, computer-created sounds. We also featured 250 Minnesota jazz artists new to the Festival. Minnesota State Arts Board support helped underwrite a significant expansion to twenty-three free venues, an important strategy to attract more audiences by presenting more Minnesota artists. The Festival has always presented a wide range of jazz, but support this year especially helped increase the number of Latin Jazz artists, that included Francisco Mela and the Cuban Safari, from Cuba; Araya Orta Latin Jazz Quartet, from Costa Rica; and Ticket to Brasil, from Brazil. 2: Thirty-one free venues, a seven-fold increase from 2011’s three free stages, enabled the Festival to present more Minnesota artists and to attract greater audiences. Because this is a free, un-ticketed event, we are not able to track new versus first-time attendees. We were able to increase attendance from 30,000 to 35,000 over the course of the three-day event, which was our original goal.
Other, local or private