DENVER — After supporting the Five Points Jazz Festival for more than 20 years, the city of Denver is changing its tune. The one-day festival will not return in 2025.
"And that’s unfortunate," singer Hazel Miller said.
Miller said she's performed for Jazz Festival audiences more than a dozen times. Her first time, she said, was in 1989. This was before the city entered into a partnership with the event.
Miller had just moved to Denver in 1984.
"It was one of my first gigs," Miller said. "All the new bands, new singers, to land the Five Points Jazz Festival, was a big, big deal. It meant that you were going to, your family was going to see you. Strangers would know about you. People would start coming in to see you because they saw you here, right on Welton. And it was that door opening."
Young, up-and-coming jazz performers will have to look elsewhere to get their starts, now that the festival isn't coming back.
Despite ending the festival, the city isn't fully separating itself from supporting jazz creatives. The money used to put the festival on year to year will instead go into a jazz-focused grant program.
"A year-round emphasis on arts and culture represented by jazz in Five Points is a way to invest more significantly in jazz artists and enliven the neighborhood in a more consistent manner. It’s a one-of-a-kind program that complements existing festivals and events in Denver," Denver Arts & Venues said in a news release.
Jazz in Denver, also, isn't going away. The city is launching Denver Jazz Fest in April.
The festival is set to span over several days in multiple venues with local professional artists and some out-of-state groups.
Miller recognizes that while the neighborhood is losing a staple event, there's more to come in celebrating jazz and history.
"It was great music, families everywhere, all the restaurants and other venues, they’re gonna hurt a little," Miller said. "But again, you have the bigger one coming, so we’re hoping for bigger crowds."
Despite music living somewhere else in the city, Miller knows history will never change.
"Sarah Vaughan, Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holiday, Duke Ellington, the kings and queens I wanted to emulate, be like, if I never played any of the big clubs, I played on Welton Street and they did too," Miller said with a big smile and laugh.