Carhartt heiress may save jazz festival again

Excerpts from the article:

The woman who saved the Detroit International Jazz Festival with a $250,000 donation last spring is ready to make her earlier gift look like chump change. However, the Music Hall Center for the Performing Arts, which has produced the jazz festival since 1994, would have to give up control of the event.

Gretchen Valade — a Carhartt clothing heiress and jazz record label owner — has pledged $10 million to create a new nonprofit foundation dedicated solely to producing the Detroit International Jazz Festival. Valade’s foundation could finally secure the financial future of Detroit’s annual Labor Day weekend jazz festival, one of the city’s signature cultural events.

Valade’s plan calls for a new foundation that would oversee artistic programming, operations, marketing and fund-raising. A $10-million endowment means that the festival would begin each year with a $500,000 head start in fund-raising, double the amount Music Hall has traditionally received from a title sponsor.

Valade’s proposal represents one of the largest individual donations to the arts in Detroit history.

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