Spyro Gyra and Kenny G will play June 26 and 27 at OCC; sponsors are invited to join the jam:

On Monday in the new upstairs party room at downtown’s Dinosaur Bar-B-Que, Syracuse Jazz Festival Director Frank Malfitano unveiled plans for the 27th annual free-admission jazz bash June 26 and 27, at Onondaga Community College.

To accommodate early-bird jazz fans, this year’s festival will do away with the VIP-only section in favor of first-come-first-served seating.

“Musicians don’t want to play to empty chairs and fans want access to the artists, so we’re making that happen,” Malfitano said.

But he also issued a plea for financial support to keep the festival alive.

If the needed $80,000 rolls in within a month, he said, the two-day event will include headline sets by Spyro Gyra and Kenny G, a late-night jam session featuring instrumentalists such as Randy Brecker, Bill Evans and Will Lee, performances by 12 local scholastic combos and a food court bolstered by none other than the world-famous Dinosaur Bar-B-Que.

Dinosaur co-owner John Stage believes it’s a partnership made in honky tonk heaven. “Let me think,” Stage said in a recent e-mail, “a warm summer day, smokin’ jazz and slow-smoked meats: I’m there!”

While the food news bodes well for the fest, the recession casts a shadow over the party plans.

“We don’t need a bailout because we didn’t do anything wrong,” Malfitano quipped, “but we do need a stimulus.”

County Executive Joanie Mahoney stood at Malfitano’s side and displayed a full-color marketing brochure designed to attract festival sponsors who are invited to use the event as a recruiting tool and to reward clients and employees.

County funding nearly doubled since last year’s festival, which was scaled back to two days in spite of title sponsorship from JGB Enterprises of Liverpool.

{Q}”The festival is a tremendous economic engine,” Mahoney said. The thousands who attend it every year spend millions of dollars in Onondaga County, she said. “So it’s really an investment.”{Q}

The festival received $70,980 from Onondaga County in December.

The 2008 festival, headlined by Chaka Khan, cost about $360,000. Malfitano has budgeted $280,000 for this year, but he’s still $80,000 short.

“It’s attainable,” he said. “We know it’s a competitive arena right now, but we also know corporations need to entertain and recruit, so we’ve created a new model that enables them to stage a quarter million-dollar event at a fraction of the cost, an event which features the world’s greatest entertainers.”

The festival’s new model will accommodate corporate sponsors at 13 different tents ringing the OCC site. The tents will allow for individual catering operations, seats with sight-lines to the performances and will be wired for stage sound and video feeds.

Suggested prices for the tents range from $100,000 for a title sponsor to $60,000 for a main-stage sponsor and $40,000 for a scholastic-stage sponsor. Eight other tents would cost $20,000 for the two-day fest.

The 2009 festival is dedicated to the late guitarist Hiram Bullock who died July 25, 2008, at age 52. Malfitano, who presented Bullock a half-dozen times at past festivals, called him “a master showman and studio wizard.”

The festival’s first-ever late-night jam session, dedicated to Bullock, will feature many of his colleagues including Spyro Gyra, the Randy Brecker/Bill Evans Soulbop Band and David Garfield’s Creatchy & The Cats Band with Will Lee and Steve Ferrone.

Spyro Gyra, led by saxophonist Jay Beckentsein and keyboardist Tom Shuman, will celebrate the Buffalo group’s 30th Anniversary here June 26.

Kenny G, the 52-year-old Seattle saxophonist who has recorded more than 30 albums totaling 50 million in sales, will close out the fest on June 27.

“Kenny has crossed over into pop in a way no other jazz instrumentalist ever has,” Malfitano said, “so for us, his Jazz Fest debut this year is historic.”