Daniel Kreps
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Martin Ludlow, CEO and founder of the Los Angeles Jazz Festival in Santa Monica, California Valerie Macon/AFP via Getty Images 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.
