Crowds came out in droves to see the Roots, Erykah Badu, and Charlie Tuna at the Saskatchewan Jazz Festival last year. But now getting the big international names is proving to be a challenge with the dropping Canadian dollar.
The festival celebrates 30 years in 2016, but pulling in artists for the anniversary is becoming difficult when the festival has to pay in American dollars.
DROPPING DOLLAR
It certainly makes our job a lot more difficult. It makes us be much more creative with our budget and try to stretch every dollar that we can in order to present the best festival that we can. It definitely has an impact on our budget.
It has an impact on our programming strategies, our marketing strategies
artistic director Kevin Tobin said.
Saskatchewan Jazz Festival artistic director Kevin Tobin says the dropping dollar makes it harder to bring in international artists. (Eric Anderson/CBC)
Tobin said they began looking at the impact of the dropping dollar before last year’s festival even started.
He said they’ve specifically been recruiting more Canadian artists in order to be responsible with the budget and keep the festival sustainable.
ticket prices
When you are right now budgeting for an additional 40 per cent when you are paying a particular artist in US dollars, that is a significant amount.
We look at how that trickles down to your overall budget, how it effects your ticket prices
He added that a priority is to keep the festival accessible and affordable.
The Jazz Festival runs for ten days each summer and has an attendance of over 85,000 people.
It will run this year from June 24 to July 3.
The Saskatchewan Jazz Festival, Inc. (SJF) was incorporated in 1992 and is owned by the Saskatoon Jazz Society.
The mandate of SJF is to stage an artistically significant annual festival of jazz and related music. SJF is a nonprofit organization and registered charity.
SJF is governed by a board of directors and employs a permanent staff of four. Over 375+ volunteers are recruited each year for the ten days of the festival.
