L.A. has a new jazz mega-fest, from a former city councilman

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One question has bothered Martin Ludlow in his decades as a concert and event promoter in Los Angeles.In a city packed with excellent jazz musicians, and a century of history with the genre, why is there no local equivalent of the massive festivals that cities like Montreal, New Orleans or Montreux, Switzerland, have built? One where the music transforms clubs, restaurants and parks across the city for nights on end?This summer’s inaugural LA Jazz Festival in August will be the biggest push in a generation to build that here.

Ludlow’s event — which melds his passion for jazz with the logistics muscle of his former life as a city councilman and labor leader — hopes to draw 250,000 fans across the city for a month of concerts culminating in a stadium-sized show on Dockweiler Beach.It will be one of the largest such events in the world, and the biggest Black-owned fest of its kind.“This festival is intended to lift up our ancestors that came to this country in bondage, terrorized, brutalized,” Ludlow said outside City Hall on Wednesday.

“It’s also about celebrating the end to those last bastions of Jim Crow racism, the days we were denied access to public drinking fountains, public swimming pools and public beaches.From the beginning of this journey, we’ve been very intentional about telling the narrative of that human rights struggle called Jazz.” Music The West Coast version of the famous chain of jazz clubs will open its doors Aug.

14 with Blue Note ambassador Robert Glasper doing two sets each Thursday and Friday.Flanked by Mayor Karen Bass, City Council members Heather Hutt, Traci Park and Tim McOsker, and jazz figures including Ray Charles Jr.and Pete Escovedo, Ludlow promised a galvanizing occasion for L.A.’s local jazz scene and the city’s wobbly tourism economy.

That jazz scene has welcomed new investments like Blue Note L.A., and lamented beloved...