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Show The Rhythm Section George Wein: The j Festival Fireball j by Ralph J. Gleason ' George Wein is, at 43, a balding, rotund bundle of energy, all involved with music. He runs the Newport Jazz Festival, the Newport Folk Festival, a yearly concert tour of upwards of 15 dates with his own band, several jazz festivals in cities in the eastern U.S.A., a Boston jazz promotion for a newspaper, as well as jazz festivals fes-tivals in Texas, Georgia and Mexico. This year he added several weeks of overseas concerts in Berlin, London and other European cities and the management manage-ment of young vibraphonist Gary Burton and his RCA Victor recording group. And now he is launchingan eight-week tour of U.S. cities with a jazz concert package that includes Dionne Warwick, Wes Montgomery, Cannonball Adderley, Thelonious Monk and Herbie Mann. How does he do it? "I couldn't stand it," he says grinning, "if I didn't have the piano. Playing with my band is what makes it worthwhile." worth-while." Of course, Wein loves music or he never would have gotten involved in this mad world to begin with ("I have to earn $100,00 a year for the staff," he insists), flying all over the country constantly and carrying on dozens of concert arrangements arrange-ments in several places simultaneously. "We did 15 concerts with the band last year. We go out and play towns you never heard of and it's a ball. We did Arkadelphia, Arkansas, a college there, and we broke it up." But Wein's real love is the Newport Jazz and Folk Festivals. Festi-vals. "I created the jazz festival idea," he says, "and now I steal from other festivals. If I see something good happen at Monterey, T bring it to Newport. That's the way it ought to be." Wein, incidentally, was one of the outside people who aided the Monterey Festival to get started ten years ago when the Newport Festival was itself only five years old. After several disastrous years including the. famous riot at Newport, Wein has now an entirely new arena, full control of the festival himself and a well-oiled machine operating it. The folk festival is done as a non-profit affair with a board of artists controlling it and Wein producing it. He is proud that among the stars who have emerged: from the Folk Festival are Joan Baez, Bob Dylan and more recently Arlo Guthrie. 'He got the biggest hand at the Saturday afternoon program and so we put him on in a hole we had in the Saturday night show and he was the hit of the festival," Wein says. Last year Wein pioneered in jazz in Mexico with a festival at Mexico City. This year he is returning again to Mexico City and is bringing the Dave Brubeck Quartet again, despite Bru-beck's Bru-beck's much publicized recent retirement. "It will be the Dave Brubeck Quartet with Gerry Mulligan," Wein says. Last year, in conjunction with the U.S. Commerce Department De-partment and Pan American Airlines, he took the Newport festival groups to Europe for a highly successful tour. This year, his eight-week summer tour will be in con junction with Schlitz Brewing Company, which is underwriting jazz these days. They'll take the show to all sorts of place!, off the beaten jazz track including Phoenix, Arizona and Sar Diego, Calif. And towards the end of the tour, a seven-daj jazz festival will be staged on the campus of Hampton Institute in Virginia, with seminars on the blues and early jazz. Wein personally sets up most of the plans for the summer tours and has just now solidified his programming for New port this year. With the enthusiasm of a proud parent, he outlined out-lined his pet program, a Schlitz Salute to the Big Bands. "WeT have Duke Ellington and Count Basie and Woody Herman and re-assemble Dizzy Gillespie's big band all in one night. Basie will play some of the old Jimmy Lunceford arrangements and Charlie Barnet will come on and do some of his old arrangements arrange-ments with the Duke Ellington band. "It ought to be something!" Wein says, grinning from ear to ear. It certainly ought to be. Liner Notes Vince Guaraldi has an album out now of his group ac companied by the San Francisco Boys Club Chorus in severa: classical and pop numbers . . . the Modern Jazz Quartet will appear with 12 American symphonies this year . . . blues har monica player Little Walter died recently in Chicago . . . trumpeter Mike Downs, who played with Philly Joe Jones and Virgin Gonsalves during the late 50s and early 60s, died ii. New York recently . . . modern jazz, traditional jazz and swinf era jazz will all be heard in the New Orleans Jazz Festival. |