2021 New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival to be Postponed to October, Source Says | Keith Spera



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The 2021 New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival will be postponed until October due to the coronavirus pandemic, according to a source with direct knowledge of the plan.

The Jazz Fest will be held at the Fair Grounds on the weekends of October 8 and 15, the source said.

Other new media including WWL TV and OffBeat magazine also confirmed the report via their own sources.

Since its creation in 1970, the Jazz Fest has remained faithful to a period of late April / early May. In recent years, the festival has encompassed two four-day weekends.

In addition to the time of year, other changes could be expected in 2021. The first weekend of the Jazz Fest will be supposed to be a three-day weekend, Friday through Sunday. The second weekend may or may not include Thursday, October 14.

An official announcement on the festival’s plans could arrive as early as next week.

Members of the board of directors of the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Foundation, the nonprofit that owns the festival, met virtually Thursday evening to discuss the planned move and other items.

For more than 50 years as a New Orleans-based concert promoter, Don Fox, of Beaver Productions, canceled shows for all manner of disasters.

The Jazz Fest celebrated its 50th anniversary in 2019. Attendance over the eight days at the Fair Grounds topped 475,000, organizers said, the largest total attendance at the festival since Hurricane Katrina.

In 2020, the Jazz Fest and the French Quarter Fest were initially postponed, then completely canceled as the pandemic persisted.

Earlier Thursday, the producers of the French Quarter Festival officially announced the postponement of their own festival from April to fall. The 2021 French Quarter Festival is scheduled from September 30 to October 30. 3.

With the advent of a COVID-19 vaccine, festival producers are hoping this fall’s replacement festival season – which falls into hurricane season – will take place.






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Trombone Shorty and Orleans Avenue with the Nevilles perform on the Acura Stage during the 50th Annual New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival at the New Orleans Fair Grounds on Sunday, May 5, 2019.




If so, it will be a month of dense music in New Orleans, with festivals taking on five weekends in a row.

French Quarter Fest runs from September 30 to October 30. 3.

Jazz Fest will then fill the next two weekends.

A smaller version of the Buku Music + Arts project at Mardi Gras World is scheduled for October 22-23.

At the conclusion of the musical marathon, the Voodoo Music + Arts Experience will occupy its traditional place of Halloween weekend from October 29 to 31.

The layout will be changed to some extent.

This is a developing story.



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