Although I’m not sure of who scooped who (albeit I didn’t make announcements about the late James Brown or Etta James, I did make announcements about a number of other artists well before the April date—see here and here), Frank DeBlase over at City Newspaper’s music blog recently noted that John Nugent and the folks at RIJF are doing more than keeping mum themselves about who’s been signed to play this year’s Rochester International Jazz Festival. According to Frank and confirmed by John Nugent in the comments to his post, Nugent has "put a gag order on booking agents, publicists, and record labels to prevent leaks" putting it in the artists contracts that they cannot release the information until after the April 5th announcement, including in the site Pollstar, which we all relied upon for the "scoops". Whether you believe that holding off the announcements until April is the best move or not (and John IS a professional at this, we must remember, and it’s not like he hasn’t had much success in promoting the RIJF), as he notes:
It’s wonderful to see all the guessing of which artists we will be
presenting at RIJF this year which is now fully booked. We’re truly
flattered because it means there is anticipation, which is what it’s
all about.
I for one haven’t had much time to try to divine who will play this year. I’ll wait until April as I haven’t been disappointed yet in the choices that Nugent, et al. has made in past years. I’ll let others read the tea leaves.
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