Swanage Photo credit: Richard Webb / Creative Commons

The Swanage Jazz Festival’s website homepage has a story announcing that it is to stop.  The statement starts as follows – with a link to the full piece

“Welcome to the twenty-eighth and final Swanage Jazz Festival. We are delighted (but also sad) to present our twenty-eighth and final programme. The Festival Board took the decision to end the Festival reluctantly, recognising that age and illness has caught up with us.” (LINK TO FULL STATEMENT)

Brian Blain, who will be doing a round-up of the festival for LJN, writes: 

Although there was little of a wake atmosphere around the 28th Swanage Festival which concluded last Sunday evening and everyone accepted that it was to be the last one, Chinese whispers were all over the site that there might be a reprieve. No secret that a dynamic, popular musician had stepped forward to take over as Artistic Director, but that would be the easy bit in relation to forward planning.

One member of the existing team of volunteers told us that a number of them would be willing to help out. So the much anticipated announcement that the Festival’s dynamic Director, Fred Lindop delivered just before the final set of the weekend, by the Dave Newton /Clark Tracey Band was inevitably an anticlimax for those expecting a dramatic reprieve.

Meetings will take place in August with interested parties and there is a formal statement on the Swanage Festival website already. We will bring you a round up of the weekend’s music next week.