LA Jazz Festival Organizers Abruptly Cancel 17-Day Event

The inaugural Los Angeles Festival, a 17-day event that featured headliners John Legend and Janelle Monáe, was abruptly canceled Friday, the same day it was set to kick off.

L.A. Jazz Fest was announced in February and was set to feature dozens of artists across the city. Organizers anticipated 250,000 attendees, and the concept was to make all of Los Angeles a stage, which would have made it one of the largest jazz festivals in the world.

The website for the event has an event listed for Aug. 22-23, which is when the Jazz on the Beach at Dockweiler Beach, the festival’s premier show, was originally scheduled to take place and included Legend, Monáe, Raphael Saadiz, Charlie Wilson, Parliament Funkadelic and many more.

Organizer Martin Ludlow, a former L.A. city council member, told the Los Angeles Times that “significant, unanticipated last-minute public safety and municipal costs associated with the final permitting of On The Beach Festival” were major reasons for pulling the plug on the event, but he plans to launch it next year.

“Although this decision was an extremely difficult one to reach, our commitment to the audiences and artists participating in the festival is to have a first-class experience worthy of the great legacy of Jazz and our great city,” Ludlow told The Times. “We were encouraged by the enthusiastic support of the artists on the bill, the fans and our sponsors for this inaugural event, and we look forward to presenting all of the components of this incredible cultural opportunity for Los Angeles and the world in 2027 and beyond.”

Ludlow, who pled guilty to misappropriating funds in 2006 and began working live events in 2012 as founder of Bridge Street, Inc., said all ticket holders for the events will be fully refunded within 30 days.

“We are so grateful to all the artists — from our headliners to our musicians in the parks, many of whom went above and beyond to make this affordable to the community,” he said in his statement. “… We apologize deeply for this situation and vow to make this right over time.”

Organizers reportedly began scaling back the event days before the festival was set to begin, and many of the artists weren’t notified of any changes.

Jazz guitarist Nicholas Mycio is one of many artists who will end up losing money because of the cancellation. In a response to a Reddit thread about the event, he said most artists were never updated and that he turned down more than $1,500 of work because of the radius clause.

“To say it blind sides us was an understatement. And if you never heard of the festival I dont blame you. While they had signed a contract with many artists they only announced online a few and did basically no promotion around anyone except the headliners,” Mycio wrote. “I was in that situation I would’ve loved and been honored to promote being a part of what I thought at the time was an amazing festival but they didn’t give me a location until July 15th and never put me on the website with a ticket link.”

Mycio added: “I had also invested a lot of money into the production of my show that is now just gone I am not the only artist or person who is associated with the festival who is losing money because of this. … Overall a truly awful situation today martin wants to talk to us and offer some explanation. Hopefully he has a real reason and it isn’t just terrible management.”