Wein, George

Wein, George (Theodore) (1925–  ) music producer; born in Boston, Mass. A pianist, he worked as a sideman with Edmond Hall, Bobby Hackett, and other mainstream jazz artists between 1944 and 1949. He had a dual career after 1950, when he opened Storyville, the best-known of the Boston nightclubs that he operated throughout the 1950s. In 1954 he inaugurated the three-day Newport Jazz Festival in Rhode Island, an annual production that expanded to a ten-day event when it moved to New York City in 1972. In 1959, he began producing festivals at various sites in the U.S.A. and in 1974 he established Festival Productions, Inc., to manage these activities on an international scale. He produced the Newport Folk Festival between 1963 and 1968. He also recorded and conducted occasional tours with his Newport All-Stars, which he began leading in 1957.