An announcement has been made about the appointment of two ‘programmers’ for the Bath International Music Festival this year. The only place I can find it is at ‘Listomania Bath’ here; rather surprisingly there is nothing in the Bath Chronicle or even on the Bath Festivals website. A reference to the appointment was, however, buried in the ‘further particulars’ of a Festival-related job, where it was described as a ‘one year interim arrangement’.
The two people appointed are described as ‘programmers’ rather than ‘artistic directors’, which suggests that they are going to draw up the programme of concerts, but perhaps not determine any overall theme of the Festival. (The job particulars are more circumspect and talk about one of them ‘support[ing] … artistic planning’, which really doesn’t make it clear who actually calls the shots.) James Waters, like the outgoing artistic director Alasdair Nicolson, comes from Scotland, and is the programmer for classical music. Another programmer, David Jones, is in charge of jazz.
I’m not a jazz fan, but I’m aware that at times those who are round here have been rather short-changed, and so I welcome this development. We lost a local champion of jazz when Miles Kington died a few years ago, and Broad Street Jazz shut down last month (along with Bath Compact Discs).
I shan’t make any other comments at this stage, but simply refer to my open letter of three years ago. Almost everything in it still applies.