The inaugural LA Jazz Festival, scheduled to start this weekend in Los Angeles and featuring concerts by John Legend, Janelle Monae, and Parliament-Funkadelic, was canceled at the last minute Friday.
The festival was first announced in February at a press conference attended by Mayor Karen Bass, with organizers — including founder and former city council member Martin Ludlow — anticipating 250,000 attendees for the citywide, weeks-long event.
The LA Jazz Festival also booked performances by Big Freedia, Raphael Saadiq, the Free Nationals, Terrace Martin, and Charlie Wilson, and was slated to start Friday with an opening ceremony featuring Lalah Hathaway and others. However, hours before it was to start, organizers announced they were pulling the plug on the festival.
However, even before the cancelation, there was speculation that the LA Jazz Festival was in trouble after organizers quietly started condensing the fest’s events, which was initially supposed to run from August 7 to August 23.
“Due to significant, unanticipated last-minute public safety and municipal costs associated with the final permitting of the On The Beach Festival, we have reached the decision to unfortunately postpone this year’s inaugural LA Jazz Festival,” Ludlow told the Los Angeles Times.
“Although this decision was an extremely difficult one to reach, our commitment to the audiences and artists participating in the festival is to have a first-class experience worthy of the great legacy of jazz and our great city. We were encouraged by the enthusiastic support of the artists on the bill, the fans and our sponsors for this inaugural event, and we look forward to presenting all of the components of this incredible cultural opportunity for Los Angeles and the world in 2027 and beyond.”
The festival’s official website was cleaned out Friday, instead advertising an August 22-23 event with “updated event info coming soon.” The fest’s Instagram has not updated in two weeks.
Due to the last-minute cancelation, many musicians, crews, attendees, and vendors descended on Los Angeles, only to find out too late that the event was canceled. Musician Isiah Collier told CBS LA that he arrived in Los Angeles on Friday following a European tour, and learned of the cancelation upon landing. “You lose trust, and without trust you can’t have community,” Collier said.
Booking agent Maurice Montoya, who booked 15 of his artists for the festival, told the Los Angeles Daily News, “It’s disappointing that the Los Angeles Jazz Festival is canceling their events in an inconsiderate fashion. To cancel one week or less before the events are about to start is sort of off. It’s not professional, to say the least. It’s put all the artists they’ve curated, whether they’re mine or someone else’s, in a difficult situation. But I also feel it’s a sort of an injustice to Los Angeles.”
