Last week the Rolling Stones announced that drummer Charlie Watts would not perform at the 2021 New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival this fall.
As it turned out, Mick Jagger and Keith Richards won’t either.
Nor will anyone else.
The 2021 Jazz Fest, like 2020’s, has been cancelled after first being postponed because of surging rates of COVID-19 infections. The loss of the festival, and the thousands of visitors that it would have attracted, is another economic and psychological blow not just for musicians, music venues and festival workers and vendors, but for New Orleans’ larger tourism economy.
The cancellation also does not bode well for other fall events.
Jazz Fest’s producers announced the cancelation Sunday, only nine days after putting tickets on sale for the Rolling Stones’ scheduled Oct. 13 appearance at the Fair Grounds. The first-ever fall Jazz Fest was to have run Oct. 8 -17.
This is the second time the Rolling Stones won’t appear at Jazz Fest. The band was previously scheduled to play the 2019 festival, but dropped out after Jagger had heart surgery.
Beyond the Stones, many hundreds of local musicians lost what is one of their highest-profile, and best-paying, gigs of the year.
Jazz Fest now plans to revert to its normal springtime slot in 2022. The dates are April 29 to May 8.
By then, three full years will have elapsed between Jazz Fests. In its first half-century, the festival never missed a year.
The decision to cancel follows a dramatic increase in COVID-19 infections throughout Louisiana due to the highly contagious delta variant. New Orleans and state officials both recently reinstated indoor mask mandates as hospitalizations surged. Louisiana set a new record for COVID hospitalizations four days in a row this week.
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“As a result of the current exponential growth of new COVID cases in the New Orleans and the region and the ongoing public health emergency, we must sadly announce that the 2021 edition of the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival presented by Shell, scheduled to take place October 8 -17, 2021, will not occur as planned,” festival organizers said in a statement.
— New Orleans JazzFest (@jazzfest) August 8, 2021
“In the meantime, we urge everyone to follow the guidelines and protocols put forth by public health officials, so that we can all soon experience together the joy that is Jazz Fest,” the statement said.
Jazz Fest is co-produced by Quint Davis’ Festival Productions Inc.-New Orleans and international entertainment powerhouse AEG Live. The festival is owned by the non-profit New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Foundation.
People who already purchased tickets for the 2021 Jazz Fest will receive an email this week about how to get a refund or roll over tickets for the future dates. All tickets for the Rolling Stones show on October 13 will be refunded automatically.
After sparking back to life throughout late spring and early summer, the New Orleans music scene finds itself once again bedeviled by COVID.
Several local music clubs, including Tipitina’s, d.b.a. and the Maple Leaf Bar, recently started requiring patrons to show proof of a COVID vaccination or a negative COVID test from the previous 72 hours.
The Maple Leaf and Snug Harbor Jazz Bistro also canceled all shows through mid-August after employees test positive for COVID.
Faubourg Brewery also pulled the plug on its live music through August, and City Park canceled its “Thursdays at Twilight” concert series in the Botanical Garden as a precaution.
With Jazz Fest now canceled, the fate of dozens of shows and special events scheduled to coincide with the festival in October is now uncertain.
The festival’s decision to cancel was apparently made quickly. With less than nine weeks until the gates of the Fair Grounds were scheduled to open, the producers faced looming deadlines. If they had to cancel, they likely wanted to do so before the weeks-long process of building the festival site commenced. And contracts with headlining artists often require non-refundable deposits a certain number of days before a scheduled show.
Beau Tidwell, Mayor LaToya Cantrell’s Director of Communications, said the cancellation was “appropriate but really disappointing. We believe that the Jazz Fest organizers made the right call, heartbreaking though it is. The Delta variant has created an extremely dangerous environment— threatening the lives of our children and vulnerable populations, and threatening our hopes for an economic recovery. The need is all the more urgent for everyone to get vaccinated, and for everyone to mask up.”
The loss of another Jazz Fest is a setback to the city’s economic recovery.
“It’s a huge disappointment for everyone, not only locals but for the tourist industry, for travelers looking forward to Jazz Fest, and for the economy and our employees,” said Mavis Early, Executive Director of the Greater New Orleans Hotel & Lodging Association. “Plenty of our hotels were already fully booked for Jazz Fest two weeks ago.
“There had been a consistent recovery over last few months and it was great to see it increase every week but I imagine we may now have a slowdown again. Our big hope now is that people will get vaccinated and this will be calmed down in just a few months.”
Loretta’s Authentic Pralines has sold pralines and beignets at Jazz Fest for many years. A good year at the festival could net over $100,000, owner Lorreta Harrison said. Losing the festival again this year is a blow, especially because her business did not get any federal assistance through the Restaurant Revitalization Fund.
“We’re going to hang in there, and by staying safe we can come back another day,” Harrison said.
She is undergoing cancer treatment, and understands the gravity of the health risks in the pandemic.
“I can take two punches to the stomach and I’m still come out fighting,” she said. “The community loves us, so that’s what’s going to get us through. We’re going to wear our masks, roll up our sleeves to get the shot and get through this.”
The economic impact of Jazz Fest reaches far beyond the Fair Grounds. The bistro Boucherie in the Carrollton neighborhood always has its busiest season around Jazz Fest time.
“It’s massive for us,” said chef/owner Nathanial Zimet. “We’ve had people who come to town and have spent the last ten Jazz Fests with us, then we do catering at people’s parties all over the city. It’s everything for us.”
Planning was well underway to handle that rise in business for the fall Jazz Fest.
“It’s like that carrot we’ve been chasing just got ripped away,” Zimet said.
Staff writer Anthony McAuley contributed to this story.
If you perform, enjoy or promote live music in New Orleans, the past week has been disconcerting.