“What we wanted to do, for the first time ever, was show the festival,” Bud Brimberg explained. “There’s never been a poster that showed the festival itself.” Since 1974, when he convinced his friend and fellow Tulane attendee Quint Davis to let him try his hand at producing a limited-edition fine-art poster for Jazz Fest, Brimberg has been working with artists to interpret and express what the festival means in just one image. For decades, he did that by looking outwards, in a sense: from secondline grand marshals parading in tuxedoed finery to Jimmy Buffett in his long hair and faded jeans, the posters celebrated the musical luminaries of Louisiana and the culture they craft and carry, just as the festival does at the Fair Grounds. But 2021, the second Jazz Fest
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Jazz Fest 2022 | Presented by Shell
in a row to be postponed due to COVID-19 concerns, felt different—both to Brimberg and to artist Scott Guion. Guion had painted the dreamy portrait of Dr. John that became the poster for 2020, the first year the festival was called off because of the pandemic, but that was different—when he was working on that image, nobody had any idea what was brewing. Planning for the 2021 festival was, of course, a different ball game. Lives were drastically rearranged, and that was the best-case scenario; too many members of the cultural community were sickened, or died, during that year. Still, the festival pushed diligently forward, if with caution, and when it became apparent that its regular spring dates were too soon for safety, organizers split the difference and
