George Wein, an impresario of 20th century music who helped found the Newport Jazz and Folk festivals, has died at age 95
Wein, 95, died “peacefully in his sleep” in his New York City apartment, said Carolyn McClair, a family spokesperson.
Critic Gene Santoro observed in 2003 that without Wein, “everything from Woodstock to Jazz at Lincoln Center might have happened differently — if it happened at all.” Wein “can justifiably claim to have invented, developed and codified the contemporary popular music festival,” Santoro wrote. Wein didn’t only work with jazz musicians. In 1959, he and Pete Seeger began a companion folk festival that would feature early performances by Joan Baez and Jose Feliciano among others and track the evolution of Bob Dylan from earnest troubadour to rule-breaking rock star.
The Newport festivals have led to numerous films and concert albums, notably Murray Lerner’s Oscar-nominated 1967 documentary “Festival!”, with Dylan, Johnny Cash and Howlin’ Wolf among the performers. Wein would later bring in Led Zeppelin, Sly and the Family Stone and James Brown and other rock and rhythm and blues acts. In 2020, when Newport went virtual because of the pandemic, Wein introduced Mavis Staples from his home in Manhattan.
“For the duration of the evening I stood alone, wide-eyed, at the foot of the stage,” he wrote in “Myself Among Others,” released in 2003, “oblivious to the sea of couples swirling around the dance floor behind me.”
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