Many local people buy only one or two afternoon or evening passes. Not all attendees at this, and many other festivals, stay for the duration. Perhaps it was a case of setting up more chairs than were expected to be needed because the rooms were big enough to hold them. I don’t know what the attendance was at this year’s festival, but judging by the number of empty seats in the two indoor venues (at the times I was in each one), I wondered if the crowd was smaller than at the previous festivals I’ve attended.
Randy’s wife and son Bix(by) were on hand as well. Albert Haim (who was also here this year), and seven other important figures in the life of the Bix Society. I should mention that Randy received this year’s Bix Lives Award on Friday evening. They played two additional sets during the festival, and Dick had a solo set as well. Watching these two masters perform was a rare treat for everyone. I believe it, and other Bix memorabilia, will be moved to the new Bix museum which is scheduled to open next May at the River Music Experience in downtown Davenport. Randy played Bix’s 1927 Conn cornet, engraved with his name, which is currently housed at the museum. I did not arrive in time for any of those, other than the one-hour performance at the Putnam Museum on Thursday by two jazz luminaries with deep connections to Bix- Dick Hyman and Randy Sandke. The festivities kicked off a few days earlier with concerts in and around Davenport. All we know at this point about next year’s event is the dates: August 3-5, 2017. One advantage of the Casino is that all the musicians could be housed at the on-site hotel, thus eliminating the need to chauffeur them to and fro. Whether the Bix returns there or not will depend, understandably, on financial as well as logistical considerations. I did not ask any of the organizers about all the maneuvering that had to go on to secure this location, but my sense of the audience was that they preferred the Davenport venue. This year, they were the equivalent of two or three city blocks apart, which for those attendees who aren’t too fleet-footed, meant at least a five-minute hike that required using two elevators or climbing several flights of steps. There, both music halls were barely a one-minute walk apart. Although the two music venues seemed satisfactory to me in terms of acoustics, accessibility, and physical layout, the setup was not as convenient as the last Bix I attended, in 2014, which was held at the Adler Center in downtown Davenport. Due to a scheduling conflict, the festival had to be moved this year to the Waterfront Convention Center and Isle of Capri Casino in neighboring Bettendorf. This year’s installment was perhaps the best ever-top-notch bands on the card and some other neat happenings.
I’ve attended the Bix Beiderbecke Memorial Jazz Festival in Davenport, Iowa five times, starting in 2001.
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