CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas — The 61st annual Corpus Christi Jazz Festival returned to Heritage Park with a new look and for the second time in 2022.
Festival President, Nick Martinez, spoke with 3NEWS and said there's 53 bands participating along with 56 arts and crafts vendors, and 14 food vendors. Martinez adds, "This is the first time we've ever had two festivals in one year. So, it's amazing to us, we felt we could pull it off and I think we did."
Event organizers said the festival is off to a good start despite less time to prepare and a few challenges along the way. "The biggest challenge is getting all the bands together and have them come out and perform. We've never had a band drop out right at the festival, but this time we did." Martinez said.
Café Latina owner, Brenda Rodriguez told 3NEWS her business is online only but plans to open a store in Corpus Christi in 2023. "We wanted to present the brand of coffee that I created. I'm a Latina, so, you know, we just wanted to show everybody what we have." Rodriguez said.
The business owner said preparing for the event so quickly was difficult, but her team had everything ready just in time. "There was quite a bit of a little struggle trying to get all the inventory out, you know, trying to get our t-shirts made and we have new merchandise." She added.
3NEWS spoke with Johnny Stobbs who participated to raise money for cancer awareness. His organization designs t-shirts and sells them throughout the year for the cause. Always a big hit at JazzFest, Stobbs was nominated to be a representative for real men wear pink.
"What we didn't know at the time was I'm the only firefighter in the state of Texas that's a real men wear pink ambassador and one of a handful in the nation." Stobbs said.
He also explained that they did not get a chance to sell shirts at the jazz festival back in March, so this festival held in October was the opportunity they needed to raise money for breast cancer and other firefighter-related cancers.
Stobbs said, "When you're selling that many shirts, being able to come to a venue like the jazz festival and finish off those is really good for our organization."
The jazz festival will be open until midnight on Saturday and 8 p.m. on Sunday, October 16th.
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