The 2013 Next Generation Jazz Festival presented by Monterey Jazz Festival gave amp Community Television a larger role in this year’s event: Record, broadcast, and stream every performance from Friday night through Sunday at 5pm. The little station that could stepped up to the task logging over 162 hours of staff and volunteer time operating 2 High Definition switchers and 6 High Definition cameras, in the Serra Ballroom and Steinbeck Forum.
The end result was pretty big for an Access Community Television station in market 126. While cable numbers are not audited by the Nielsen Company, internet streams are very accountable and amp’s numbers were nothing less than stellar. Jazz fans in 64 countries gobbled up over 760 Gigabytes of bandwidth with 8300+ total streams. In total, the amp crew recorded 56 performances which will be separated and edited in post production. The performances will be uploaded to ampmediatv YouTube and broadcast on amp2 (Comcast 27 and AT&T 99) and simultaneously streamed at ampmedia.org throughout the coming year. “We’re very excited about the numbers,” remarked amp Executive Director Paul Congo, “we doubled last year’s streams and tripled the number of countries participating.”
“The Next Generation Jazz Festival is truly an amazing event,” added Executive Producer, Stephen Ellzey, “Friday night featured an Adjudicators and Educators performance by so many Jazz greats, there wasn’t enough room on stage”. That particular performance is an event favorite and this year was awe-inspiring: A rousing set by Berklee College of Music’s Edmar Colon Quartet was followed by 90 minutes of pure jazz heaven with Jazz Artist Ray Drummond on Bass, Joel Frahm on tenor sax, Jeff Hamilton on drums, Antonio Hart on alto saxophone, Russell Malone on guitar, pianist Patrice Rushen, trumpet master Bobby Shew, bari saxophonist Gary Smulyan, vocalist extraordinaire, Kenny Washington, and the Monterey Jazz Festival’s own Paul Contos on flute. This awesome ensemble brought the crowd to their feet on multiple occasions and would easily have been worth a $1000 ticket to experience . However, like the rest of the Festival, it was Free. That says a lot about the Next Generation Jazz Festival, Monterey Jazz Festival, and Monterey. There are very few festivals that could assemble a group of jazz masters like the aforementioned, no other that would offer free seats, and no other City in the world where one could walk in off the street in shorts and flip flops and grab a seat for what was a jazz experience to remember for all time. No wonder it’s so easy to walk around here with a big smile!
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