Notes

Presenting - Lido Chilelli - Founder of the Toronto International Beaches Jazz Festival
Every year one entertainment event in Toronto's Beach neighbourhood attracts huge worldwide attention: the Toronto International Beaches Jazz Festival. Lido Chilelli, a local entrepreneur, is the one who came up with the theory and who keeps organizing the event every year, and he definitely needed to be included in the Beach article series.

I met Lido at his private home / office located on Queen Street East. more info was buzzing, mail was just being delivered, and important news from sponsors was just coming in. I realized I had to be speedy to catch this busy man in a few free moments.

Born and raised in Toronto, Lido has been surviving in the Beach for 25 years. His two children attended neighbourhood schools and so are active in local sports and culture. Of Italian heritage, he originally grew up in Downsview and studied urban geography at York University. His early work experience included a stint with a special events tour company that could take visitors to NFL games, provide souvenirs for the Grey Cup and also the papal visit. Event management has long been in Lido's blood. He ventured forth to become a business owner and opened a bar / restaurant called "Lido's in the Beach" that was functioning for 17 years. Lido adds that he chose the Beach neighbourhood since it is a close knit, unique community with a wide Torontonian appeal.

He liked the neighbourhood so much he wanted to open it around the rest of Toronto. So he got to work, hired live bands, placed on some jazz music and dancing at his restaurant. People from all over Toronto started flocking here. Lido's drew a large number of people in to the Beach neighbourhood.

Predicated on this experience Lido took his suggestions to the next level: he concluded that there must be a jazz festival. He said "We've the park, we have the musicians, and we have the music lovers." All of the ingredients have there been. Lido admits he knew nothing about festival organization; he simply used his good sense. In 1989 the first Beaches Jazz Festival was kicked off. It had been held in the park - Kew Gardens - and lasted for two days with an attendance of several thousand people. The great thing was that the festival was free, and its popularity exploded virtually overnight. A trip to the park to see some live jazz was the perfect family outing. Lido describes the setting in the park as "a recipe for a musical love-in."

The residents wanted more, so he made a decision to develop an activity during the week which is how Streetfest was created. Streetfest happened being an original event showcasing bands between Woodbine and Beech Avenues. During the first few years it was held from 7 to 11 pm, and the roads were still open to traffic. The event's popularity spread like wildfire, people were dancing on the sidewalks and spilling out onto the streets. Queen Street was finally closed off to road traffic in 1995, and as Lido says "The others is history".

The neighborhood impact of the Beaches Jazz Festival is enormous: Lido recently commissioned an economic impact study which concluded that the Beaches Jazz Festival directly or indirectly attracts about $38 million each year to the town of Toronto. For most local businesses it's the best time of the year. This year the Beaches Jazz Festival will generate over 120 million media impressions, and during 2006 the web site had 25 million hits from everywhere. The Beaches Jazz Festival has become a tourist stop for folks from all over the world and provides a significant boost to local hotels and restaurants.

But not only people love this event, local and international music aficionados alike have fallen deeply in love with this festival: in a recently available ECOS/ Toronto Star Poll the Beaches Jazz Festival was voted Toronto's favourite music festival. Now in its 19th year, musicians come from across the world. They love the crowd and the area since it offers so much fellowship and a really special atmosphere.

The costs of gaining a free festival are funded almost exclusively through corporate sponsorships. Less than 10% of the budget is included in funds from public sources. Lido adds it is becoming increasingly challenging to get sponsorships; particularly this year he has noticed a change in the organization marketplace, and some corporations are leaving sponsoring community events. Lido commented that it's a challenge every year to put the festival on because things like policing, insurance and garbage removal cost more. Every year it gets harder.

He calls the festival a labour of love; it really is "just like a baby that you look after". He concludes if you are in the arts that is the way it is. Next year the festival is going to celebrate its 20th anniversary and Lido sighs that "even after each one of these years essentially you're still a starving artist".

Obtaining a street festival off the ground isn't easy, and Lido adds that you have to be sensitive to the needs of the neighborhood residents. Working with the firms and residents involves an educational process, and all of the stake-holders need to look for a good way of co-existing. What worked in Lido's favour was that he himself is really a resident of the neighbourhood, he could be portion of the community and works with the neighbourhood on a regular basis. He would learn immediately if something needed adjusting.

Lido works with an employee of 12 employees and about 200 volunteers. The Beaches International Jazz Festival Society is really a non-profit organization that gets its funding solely through corporate sponsorships. But Lido's organizational and promotional talents aren't limited by the Beaches Jazz Festival: for 2007 his event management company, Beach Towel Productions, will handle a complete group of other events:

- The 3rd Annual Barrie Waterfront Festival featuring buskers, music, street theatre, fireworks and other activities.
- The 3rd Annual Distillery Blues Festival, highlighting Rhythm & Blues at Toronto's Distillery District
- The 5th Annual 95.3 New Country Canada Day Festival, including food, arts & crafts and free concerts at Sunnyside Beach. http://www.country953.com
- The 10th Annual Toronto Fiesta, with more than 50 bands performing on St. Clair Avenue West near Landsdowne.
- Parti Gras! at the Distillery - Toronto's very own "Mardi Gras" party, complete with live music, New Orleans style cuisine, street performers, artisans and a fashion show.
- The 19th Annual Beaches International Jazz Festival, featuring over 70 bands.
- The 2nd Annual Y108 Picnic in the Park where Y108 presents Canada's premier up and coming bands at Gage Park in Brampton.
- The next Annual Wasaga Beachfest, featuring Canadian performers, arts & crafts and a children's play area in Wasaga Beach.
- The 16th Annual Beachfest - MIX 99.9 - showcasing top level Canadian bands, arts & crafts and a children's play area at Sunnyside Park.

All of the special events that Lido organizes happen in the busy summertime from May to September. He says you have to be really organized and work together with a good team of people to make it all happen. This season the Toronto International Beaches Jazz Festival will undoubtedly be held from July 20 to 29 and you will be kicked off with Parti Gras! - a New Orleans style celebration in the Distillery District. The Ovation of Jazz will undoubtedly be held on July 25, 2007 at the Balmy Beach Club because the official launch of the Beaches International Jazz Festival. It is a tasteful event offering ample opportunity to rub elbows with the Who's Who and Future Stars of the Jazz industry!

The TD Canada Trust 2007 Jazz Workshop and Lecture series offers a number of workshops such as for example "Afro Cuban Rhumba", "The Art of Jazz Singing", jazz composition workshops and others more. Streetfest delivers a whole smorgasbord of live music, from the best possible Big Band, Jazz, Rhythm & Blues and Soul in Canada to a global collection of Acid, Bebop, Columbian, Dixieland, Flamenco, Folk, Funk, Latin, Reggae and Samba performers. The largest stars are featured on the Main Stage on the Saturday and Sunday of the event.

Queen Street has been hopping east of Woodbine, and each year the festival gets bigger. Right now discussions are underway about expanding the programming to the area immediately west of Woodbine. The merchants for the reason that area have indicated a pastime in becoming portion of the festival, and even this past year there were a couple of bands playing there on the road before local businesses.

Lido Chilelli has become a fixture on Toronto's entertainment scene, and for his work locally Lido has won numerous awards from community organizations, the city and the province, like the Queen's Golden Jubilee Medal. He was also honoured because the Lion's Club's 'Lion of the Year'. He's got been featured in a number of national magazines and is really a founding member of the Community Police Liaison Committee for the Beach.

One project that's dear to Lido's heart is fundraising for the Toronto East General Hospital. The Beaches Jazz Festival raised $200,000 for the Hospital and built the brand-new maternity ward at Toronto East General. Lido and his organization use the hospital regularly.

His work day is packed, a typical work day goes at the very least from 9 am to 6 pm. A lot of his job involves organizational duties in-house and meetings from the office. The average workday has about a couple of meetings, sometimes there are 3 or 4. He says he's got good staff members that he can rely on to greatly help him get each one of these events off the ground.

From left to right: Rico Ferrara: Artistic and Stage Manager; Lido Chilelli; Diane Wilson: coop student from George Brown College, and Pat Carpignano: Operations Manager.

With almost twenty years of experience and diverse events throughout Toronto and Southern Ontario, Lido Chilelli is definitely the go-to man to create together free music, special events and fun for your family.

Susanne Pacher may be the publisher of a website called Travel and Transitions(http://www.travelandtransitions.com). Travel and Transitions handles unconventional travel and is chock full of advice, tips, real life travel experiences & interesting life journeys, interviews with travellers and travel experts, cross-cultural issues, and many other features.

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