Jazzaldia 2020 – A Jazz Festival Reworked for a Pandemic

This past week San Sebastian celebrated the 55^th edition of Jazzaldia, the city’s jazz festival (22-26 July). As you can imagine, nearly every public event has been cancelled in the city and around the country, which is especially disappointing during the summer season. But somehow the organizers of Jazzaldia figured out a way to put on this year’s event – albeit in a highly modified way.

We love Jazzaldia and look forward to it every year, so I kept a close eye on the program as it was developed and revised. The first thing they did was cancel all the free, outdoor concerts. You might recall that last year we saw Joan Baez in concert on the beach. Well, that venue, and artists traveling to San Sebastian from outside Europe had to be jettisoned. Instead, they used four main indoor venues, determined that capacity would be limited to about 50%, invited local artists to perform, and cut ticket prices. As the event got closer, they added a few free outdoor concerts with seating at tables spaced wide apart.

Two concerts caught my eye. The first was a recreation of a famous Charlie Parker concert at Massey Hall (Toronto) in 1953, featuring Dizzy Gillespie, Bud Powell, Charles Mingus y Max Roach. 2020 is the centennial of Parker’s birth, and this was a rousing tribute. Listening to “Salt Peanut,” in an ornate Victorian opera house built in 1912 was amazing. The quintet did justice to many jazz classics. About half of the seats were blocked off, so we were spaced apart from other guests. They even organized the post-concert exit to avoid crowding. And, of course, everyone wore their masks and used hand sanitizer.

The second concert was a piano soloist, Paul San Martin, who is from San Sebastian. This concert took place at the San Telmo museum, in the former church cloister, so it was outside. The piano was set at one juncture of the cloister and the crowd sat in two of the cloister halls facing the piano, with seats spaced apart in a zig-zag pattern. The vaulted ceilings created wonderful acoustics and the program included many easily recognizable pieces, including Edelweiss (a bluesy-jazzy version), Georgia, and Swanee River.

Both concerts were quite a treat, especially because we paid less than $20 for both. It was a terrific opportunity to do something “normal.” Whether going forward with the concerts was the best idea considering there are small outbreaks here and there in our area, but none in San Sebastian itself, remains to be seen. Life is about choices and in these times all we can do is hope that the decisions we make, and the authorities make, don’t have calamitous results.

Stay healthy and safe,

Shana & Jeff