ORGANISERS of the Jamaica Ocho Rios Jazz Festival are currently engaged in meetings to decide the fate of this year’s event.

Organising committee chair, jazz chanteuse Dr Myrna Hague Bradshaw explained that while the festival — which was set for June 7-14 — will not be held in its traditional form due to the current global crisis brought on by the spread of the novel coronavirus, discussions are still being had regarding a virtual form of the festival as well as a traditional staging later this year.

“With this current situation, with everything so up in the air and such uncertainty, it is impossible to hold the festival in the way that we have become accustomed to. None of our overseas acts can travel, there is the ban on mass gatherings, so that is out of the question at this time. We are meeting to see whether we can do the event later this year,” Hague Bradshaw told the Jamaica Observer.

“This year is our 20th anniversary and it seems such a shame to lose the opportunity to celebrate this milestone. Our committee is looking at a number of possibilities to see how we can make this happen. One such is the staging of a virtual festival. We would ask some of our local and international performers to submit some footage of performances which we can put on the web, just to let persons know that we have not died and there is something to look forward to,” she continued.

The festival was founded by Hague Bradshaw and her late husband, big band conductor, trumpeter, and arranger Sonny Bradshaw. The festival — which boasts a number of events on the north coast as well as the Corporate Area — has become a standard on the annual entertainment calendar with a jazz purist formula.

Hague Bradshaw also noted that a number of concrete plans were already in place for the 2020 staging before the coronavirus derailed their efforts.

“We had already booked two international acts. This year would have also seen the inaugural Sonny Bradshaw Memorial Lecture, which would have been presented by [composer] Gary Crosby from the UK. Gary was really looking forward to joining us for this lecture. We were also all set to do our workshops for musicians and students. This year we had two planned: One at the Mico University College and the other at Alpha Boys’ School, which as we all know has been such a great space to groom some of our great jazz musicians. Our opening jazz event was already set for the FDR Resort in St Ann, as well as a number of the events across Kingston… those were being finalised. Now we will just have to regroup and see what is possible given the global situation,” said Hague Bradshaw.