Bay Harbour: May 04, 2016

PAGE 6 BAY HARBOUR
Wednesday May 4 2016
our PEOPLE
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Jodi Wright
Veteran festival director’s work with writers,
Sumner’s Jodi Wright is again running the Cavell Leitch New
Zealand Jazz and Blues Festival which will take place this
month. She spoke to Bridget Rutherford about starting the
World Buskers Festival, living in Sumner and writing a novel
inspired by growing up around addiction
So can you tell me a bit about
this month’s Cavell Leitch NZ
Jazz and Blues Festival?
Well this is the 18 th Cavell
Leitch New Zealand Jazz and
Blues Festival. Post-earthquakes
it’s been a real
challenge because of the
venue situation. We’ve
spent the last couple of
years using different venues
but this is the first year
we’re back at a proper one,
the Isaac Theatre Royal.
This year’s event is also
a celebration of the jazz
school turning 25, so we’ll
have that on the first day
on May 25, and on May
26 we have the Ramsey
Lewis Quartet, they are
coming in from Chicago.
The festival
has been running
for a while, I feel
really great about
how the city’s
progressing and
the rebuild. We
also moved
the festival from April to May this year
because historically it has been in the
school holidays, but we wanted to incorporate
the great high school jazz bands.
This year it will feature four high school
jazz bands, but I would have preferred to
have more.
Where was the festival hosted after
the earthquakes?
We had some at The Bedford. We had
Charlie Musselwhite, one of the greatest
blues performers in the world, perform in
the student lounge at Christchurch Polytechnic
Institute of Technology (now Ara
Institute of Canterbury), which he was ok
to do because he comes from grassroots.
I told him the situation, that we had a
big earthquake, and he was like ‘wow,
I will come out’. Bonnie Raitt played
in the Christchurch Town Hall in 2008,
and came back in 2013 and was fully
aware of the quake. It’s been a challenge
in some ways to accommodate acts that
require a proper concert hall. The Piano
venue which is nearly built venue, looks
wonderful, so things are coming around.
Who will be at this month’s festival?
I have Ramsey Lewis and Tami Neilson
performing in the Transitional Cathedral,
doing a bluesy country show, and there
are so many other great performers. One
group has put together a Stevie Wonder
show. For four nights we have international
acts. We’ve also got great art work
this year, so it’s been good. We’ve got a
bit of everything, and even jazz shows at
The George.
So how long have you been running
the festival?
Eighteen years. I started the World
Buskers Festival, and I just retired from
that two years ago. Sometimes in the 90s
and 2000s I would be running three or
four festivals at a time. I was executive
director for the writers festival as well.
I don’t know how or why I did all of it
at the same time, but I would be running
from one to another.
Can you fill me in on how the World
Buskers Festival actually started?
Well, right about the time you were
born I moved to New Zealand from Seattle.
I had a difficult time because I come
from this background of events and marketing
and I had difficulty finding a job.
After a while of not finding a job, I called
the then mayor Vicki Buck. She was really
good and encouraging. She said she
had been planning to put a committee
together to start a Festival of Romance
and said I should apply for it. So I did,
and I got it. The Festival of Romance was
an outdoor arts and entertainment festival,
centred around the central city and
the Arts Centre for nine days, concluding
on Valentine’s Day. It was sweet, but
the funding for it just wasn’t happening.
Then I started the World Buskers Festi-