Decades Of Jazz Fest Support Earn Special Recognition For OCC, National Grid And Verizon

Three of Syracuse Jazz Fest’s longest-running and staunchest supporters, Onondaga Community College, National Grid and Verizon, were tapped for special recognition by Fest founder Frank Malfitano at a March 26th press conference at Dinosaur Bar-B-Que.

Onondaga Community College received its 10-year Jazz Fest Special Recognition Award for the college’s outstanding service to the arts and to education in CNY, and in particular for hosting Jazz Fest for the past decade (2001-2010). Besides providing an attractive venue, and a spacious pastoral on-campus outdoor amphitheater that has enabled the festival to expand and serve a greater audience, OCC has also been instrumental in facilitating the growth and development of the festival’s award-winning educational program.

As in each of the previous 10 years, more than 15 student ensembles will once again perform at the 28th annual Syracuse Jazz Festival this June 25-27, at OCC. Area music students will also attend clinics and workshops conducted by main-stage performers. Admission is free, and all events, including the educational clinics are open to the public.

"Our 10 years at the OCC campus ties the record for the longest length of time spent at a venue, which is sure to be surpassed in 2011, and in 2012, when Jazz Fest celebrates its 30th anniversary on campus as OCC turns 50," Malfitano said. "More importantly, they’ve strengthened the festival’s already-strong commitment to community education."

Jazz Fest was first staged at Song Mountain Ski Resort (1983), before spending the following 7 years at Long Branch Park in Liverpool (1984-90) and 10 years in downtown’s Clinton Square (1991-2000), where Jazz Fest pioneered the redevelopment of the square for use as a festival site.

National Grid and Verizon each received a Jazz Fest Special Recognition Award for two decades of consecutive support for arts and education in Central New York, and for their unprecedented ongoing corporate support of Jazz Fest, its community service mission, and its internationally ranked and award-winning educational programs, for the past 20 years (1991-2010).

"In the festival’s 28-year history, no other Central NY-area corporations have given greater financial support to Jazz Fest on a more consistent basis than Verizon and National Grid," Malfitano said. "It's a remarkable achievement, when one considers that we live in an era when most corporations sponsor events for less than a 3-year period on the national average.

"And while many other corporations are evading their commitments to the community under the shroud of a weak economy, Verizon and National Grid have each stepped up to the plate in significant fashion to preserve their respective corporations’ time-honored legacies of charitable giving and philanthropy to deserving causes and to deserving community-based cultural institutions. Their philanthropy has set the gold standard."