The twelfth Rye International Jazz and Blues Festival promises appearances from Monty Alexander, Mica Miller, Jon Cleary, the Jazz Defenders, Camilla George and many more in venues across the beautiful town, part of the Cinque Ports confederation. Director Ian Bowden talks about the festival’s origins from a discussion in a Rye pub, this year’s programme, and his plans for the future of the event. Interview by Bruce Lindsay.
“It started with a germ of an idea in 2011,” Bowden says. “I went to the Mermaid Inn, a famous old Rye hotel on a picturesque, cobbled street, and met the owner, the late Bob Pinwill. I came up with the idea of a jazz festival and he thought it would work well. The first festival took place in 2012 and we’ve built it organically over the years. Vicki (Haxton, Bowden’s wife and the festival’s event manager and director) was eight months pregnant with our daughter, so it was a bit of an unusual thing to do, but the family has been involved since the beginning.”
Bowden describes that first festival as “a toe in the water,” with limited funds. He still managed to attract a big-name: Ginger Baker’s Jazz Confusion. “He gave a fantastic drumming workshop and headline concert. We did other things around town in pubs and hotels and it grew from there.” Bassist Herbie Flowers was another early guest, but the first few years were tough. “It was just about getting something started,” Bowden recalls, “then you get two or three years under your belt and start to realise ‘This is a bit good. This is what we want to happen.’ We gradually raised the bar and started to use a really beautiful venue, St Mary’s Church.”
The twelfth-century church dominates the hill on which Rye stands and has a concert capacity of around 400. Bowden calls it “The beating heart of our festival … It’s now where we do all our headline concerts. I liken it to Ronnie Scott’s on steroids. It’s a little bit special. The acoustics are wonderful thanks to its wooden roof.” Over the festival’s dozen or so years St Mary’s has hosted headline acts including Sergio Mendes, Curtis Stigers, Courtney Pine, Jose Feliciano and Emeli Sandé. Bowden describes the mix as “funky stuff, soulful stuff, a balance between jazz, blues, R&B, soul funk, Latin and Cuban music. All these musical styles are genetically linked. We’re varied in our programming because of this. If we stuck rigidly to one style I think it would be incredibly hard. We’ve got to appeal to a wide audience.”
There are also occasional concerts at the nearby De La Warr Pavilion in Bexhill: Gregory Porter and Dionne Warwick have appeared there in previous festivals and this year Curtis Stigers plays a pre-festival show on 3 August. He can’t be in the UK during the festival itself, but his appearance, says Bowden, “helps us build the momentum towards the festival itself.” Rye town centre remains as the festival’s focal point, however, and Bowden speaks of the town, its hotels, pubs, streets and architecture, with almost as much enthusiasm as he has for the festival’s music, conscious that the town is an attraction in itself.
“We’re a boutique festival by design,” Bowden explains. “We have the church concerts, a free outdoor music stage very near St Mary’s, and smaller events around the town.” The festival attracts around 10,000 people each year. “It’s small compared to the big boys, but it’s not about volume. The audience tends to be from the 35-75 age group, people who really love their music. For the outdoor stage we’re more experimental. We like to bring in new artists and that appeals to a slightly younger audience, but we don’t tend to attract teenagers. What we’re trying to do with musicians such as Camilla George or Mica Miller (both appearing in St Mary’s this year), talented but not yet household names, is to get people to trust our judgement, to allow us to introduce new acts to them as well as promoting established acts such as Monty Alexander or Eric Bibb that they would already be familiar with. That’s how you grow your audience. It’s quite a challenge but it keeps things fresh.”
The team start programming months before the festival begins. “It’s a skeleton framework at first. We build things around the main headliners at the church, the outdoor stage bubbles along for quite a while. In some ways we have our regulars for that stage — the Jazz Defenders, for example, have played there before — but we add fresh acts each time. There’s a great vibe on the outdoor stage, no question.” St Mary’s hosts two concerts each day. One of this year’s headliners, pianist Jon Cleary, has a local connection despite spending 35 years based in New Orleans: “There’s a lovely connection there. He grew up in a little village called Cranbrook, just 20 minutes away from Rye. Before I started the festival I met him when he was over for Christmas and now he’s playing at St Mary’s.”
The Rye International Jazz and Blues Festival is now an established part of the festival calendar, but the team is by no means complacent. “Twelve years on I’m probably working as hard as ever,” says Bowden. “We came through the pandemic as a small, independent, festival. We consider ourselves to be a family festival, we have amazing volunteers and professionals, but it has been tough. It’s not easy out there, funding is one of the biggest challenges ever, for festivals across the UK not just Rye. But if you want value for money, I think our combination of great artists in an intimate setting plus the free music, giving something back to the community — I think that’s terrific value. It’s always been part of my thinking, that this is an experience. Yes, you’re going to soak up the vibe and atmosphere of the music but you can also explore Rye and its surroundings.”
There are plans for the festival’s future: “Rye has a beautiful, grassed area, called The Salts, just below the town centre, where we’d like to run an outdoor stage and a food and drink festival. The vision, skills and passion are all there, it’s all about the timing.” Times are hard and uncertain for the music festival scene, but events such as the Rye International Jazz and Blues Festival will hopefully continue to build their musical offerings and their audiences. The 2024 Rye festival has plenty to offer lovers of jazz, blues and soul, and Bowden’s advice is simple: “Come down, get some fresh air, listen to some great music — take a leap of faith.”
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The 2024 Rye International Jazz and Blues Festival takes place from Thursday 22 to Monday 26 August.
