Fire-stricken Idyllwild community, united by Jazz in the Pines, now must tell it good-bye

The community of Idyllwild came together this weekend to celebrate the 25th anniversary of its major tourism event, Jazz in the Pines, and its survival after the Cranston Fire.

And now, the leaders of the Idyllwild Arts Academy are doing what the arsonist accused of setting that fire could not. They’re making it go away for a while.

Pamela Jordan, head of the school and president of the Idyllwild Arts Foundation that produces Jazz in the Pines as a fundraiser for academy scholarships, said Saturday the festival will go on hiatus in 2019 to analyze how it and the school should move forward.

MORE: Marshall Hawkins thoughts on Jazz in Pines

MORE: Idyllwild Fire Department deals with politics 

“I think some people believe we are not going to come back, but we are coming back,” Jordan said at the festival. “The Idyllwild Arts Foundation and the board of trustees about three years ago crafted a new strategic plan and a new vision for the organization and it’s through that lens that we’re really looking at who we are and who we serve and our mission.

“Nothing is going to touch the summer program. That is who we are; that is who we serve. That program is for ages 5 through 95 and nothing’s going to change that. But, you have to look at the program. You have to look at the relevance of the offering, and those are the things we are revisiting, along with so many other things.”

Jordan said nothing is off the table as she and her colleagues begin analyzing data collected by a consultant that held one-on-one interviews with community leaders and listening forums with anyone in Idyllwild that wanted to weigh in on the direction of the Idyllwild Arts Academy and Jazz in the Pines for the next 25 or 30 years.

The festival co-founder, Marshall Hawkins, was honored and frequently praised over the weekend for launching the internationally heralded Idyllwild Arts Academy jazz program, as well as for turning Jazz in the Pines into a showcase for its alumni. He programmed the festival with a mix of alumni and name artists, and played in the festival as a bass player with the Harry Pickens and Richie Cole small combos, and as a leader of the Seahawk Modern Jazz Orchestra, which featured students and alumni playing with their mentors and jazz stars Holly Hofmann, Mike Wofford and Jeff Hamilton, who provided a festival-defining interlude of music by Antonio Carlos Jobim with symphonic strings.

Hawkins turned his three-pronged personal mission of keeping jazz alive, keeping jazz musicians working and educating the young to carry on the jazz tradition into a professional mission for his school program.

But Hawkins is turning 80 next year and Jordan said the foundation must “look at how we engage Marshall in the future of the jazz festival when he is someday not sitting at the center of it. It would be foolish to think we can make those plans and have those conversations and really gather the input we need to make well-informed plans without taking that year (off) from this festival.”

Hawkins’ surviving co-founder, Barbara Wood, said during the festival she thinks Jazz in the Pines was better before the Idyllwild Arts Foundation took over leadership because “it had more heart and it made more money for the school.” A volunteer group called The Associates attracted bigger crowds and saved money by using volunteers for security and administration, which she said made the festival feel more like a community event. The IAF now pays professionals for those services and features music reflecting Hawkins’ curriculum, as opposed to the pop and smooth jazz artists booked by The Associates that had more baby boomer appeal.

Jordan said she thinks the festival program should reflect what’s being taught at the academy.

“It would be a little bit like (having) a folk music festival and we teach classical and jazz,” she said. “There’s a place for that, but it doesn’t represent Idyllwild Arts, so, I think that’s right.”

But she said she’s considering changing dates for the festival or the school program to better integrate Jazz in the Pines with the jazz classes. The program now ends two weeks before the festival, so the students lose an opportunity to learn from the festival artists — in clinics or by watching them on stage.

She said she’s like more community involvement, but the IAF needs to take a year off to figure out how the community can help.

“The essential question,” she said, “(is) community involvement in what? What is it we want them to do? We found in our listening forums that people do want to be involved in Idyllwild Arts programs and activities. But Idyllwild Arts has to step back and say, ‘Where do we need your help? Where are we trying to go?’”

The community interest in Jazz in the Pines was made apparent at the opening night Patrons Dinner, attended by VIP donors and Congressman Raul Ruiz, who called the event a testament to its supporters’ resiliency and spirit.

“This is community,” he said. There is no other community I know of that deserves the jazz festival it celebrates more than this one.”

Idyllwild Fire Chief Patrick Reitz accepted thank yous on behalf of his firefighters that verged on hero worship while emceeing a silent auction to benefit the school. But he said he agreed to serve as host before the Cranston Fire and he said in an interview his first thoughts when the fire broke out was to evacuate the residents, although the backfires his department set behind the main festival stage was credited with preventing the fire from advancing onto the arts academy campus.

“Are we going to be able to button this up enough to where we can make jazz happen?” he said. “It’s important. It’s important for the school, it’s important for the town. But, is that my immediate concern when we’re fighting a fire in the first 36 hours? No. My immediate concern is the safety of our folks and the safety of this town.”

Emmy Award-winning actress Sharon Lawrence, whose Idyllwild home was saved by the firefighters, was among those thanking the chief. But she talked about an employee at the True Hardware store who lost his trailer home and was put up by a next-door neighbor whose trailer was spared. She talked about picking up a classical guitarist as he was walking to a Red Cross station after losing his home and his guitar.

“I have a heart here in this school that was saved by these people — and a heart at Living Free,” she said. "We’re big supporters of that, too. I was doing a performance in the Hamptons when this was happening and it was so breath-stopping. I was holding my breath on the other side of the continent and knowing there’s nothing we can do.”

Brian Tracy, a poet who produces the monthly Idyllwild Storytellers series, told of how he had closed escrow on his house in Palm Desert to move full-time into a cabin he built in Idyllwild so he could become more involved with the alpine community. But he was evacuated the day after escrow closed, leaving him potentially homeless just hours after thinking he had two homes. He attended the jazz festival and is planning to produce a poetry segment in another fundraiser next weekend, called Idyllwild Strong, for the victims of the Cranston Fire.

After his Idyllwild home was saved, he said Jazz in the Pines was like a bonding experience with other community members.

“We’ve bonded with certain people over the last couple weeks, but here, at this larger festival, we’ve seen even more people and more neighbors and shared stories with them as well,” he said. “(It’s) the kind of gratitude that goes with being together and being so close and seeing the destruction that’s not so far away from you and the school. I think there’s a lot of gratitude and a lot of love and a lot of sense of community here because it is, ultimately in many ways, still a community event.”

Informed of plans to consider some changes to the festival, Tracy said he’d like to see it expanded to include blues.

“I think if we can do a jazz and blues festival, we can expand the audience slightly and increase the amount of scholarship moneys that are available to the students up here at Idyllwild Arts,” he said. “If we do get the blues up here, maybe that will lead to the blues being taught at the school and maybe they’ll expand the music program. So, nothing wrong with that.”

The Idyllwild Strong benefit is being planned by Idyllwild residents Brian Parnell, of the rock band Throw the Goat, and Nathan DeJarnette, manager of Radio Idyllwild, with more than 50 diverse bands playing in at least 10 venues in Idyllwild from 3-10 p.m. Friday, noon-10 p.m. Saturday and noon-8 p.m. Sunday. No admission fees will be charged, but donations will be accepted. For information, go to the Idyllwild Strong Facebook page.