Instead of listening to the blues this week, Calgarians will be singing the blues as organizers have cancelled this week’s Calgary 2010 Jazz Festival due to financial constraints.
The festival was set to launch today, but interim C-Jazz president Richard Sherry told Metro they had to make the “painful” decision to cancel after a six-hour board meeting on Saturday. It was revealed the show cannot go on following an in-depth examination of the organization’s finances.
“For several months, the board had been asking the C-Jazz executive director for a detailed rundown of expenses and cash flow required for the 2010 festival,” Sherry said.
“Now that we finally got a look, we were surprised that our wishes to scale down the festival following the difficult 2009 festival were, for the most part, disregarded.”
Sherry said the board believed less pain would be inflicted on the artists, volunteers and music fans if the event was cancelled before the opening, but longtime attendee Kevin Mathers is disappointed.
“It doesn’t make sense that they would cancel it this close to the event. It’s really too bad because I was really looking forward to it,” he said.
Arrangements are being made to refund ticket buyers.
