The Newport Jazz Festival Benefit Auction Is Live — and Every Bid Supports Music Education and Artist Relief
Signed artist placards hand-lettered by Nan Parati. Limited-edition festival posters. Stage-used setlists. 100% of proceeds go to the Newport Festivals Foundation. Closes Tuesday, October 27 at 11:59 AM ET.
The Newport Jazz Festival is the oldest and most storied jazz festival in the United States. Founded in 1954 by George Wein and Elaine Lorillard in Newport, Rhode Island, it has been the site of some of the most important recorded performances in jazz history. Miles Davis’s “Miles Davis at Newport 1955” captured the performance that relaunched his career after a period of struggle. Duke Ellington’s 1956 Newport performance, captured on the album “Ellington at Newport,” is widely considered one of the greatest live jazz recordings ever made, the night Paul Gonsalves played 27 consecutive choruses on “Diminuendo and Crescendo in Blue” and the crowd went so wild that the State Police had to be called. Billie Holiday, Thelonious Monk, John Coltrane, Charles Mingus, Dizzy Gillespie, Mahalia Jackson, Chuck Berry, and virtually every major figure in American popular music has performed at Newport since 1954. The festival does not simply have a history. It is the history.
The Newport Festivals Foundation, which administers the auction, is the nonprofit organization behind both the Newport Jazz Festival and the Newport Folk Festival. Its year-round work extends well beyond the summer festivals into music education programs that bring jazz to students who might not otherwise encounter it and into artist relief initiatives that provide direct support to musicians facing financial hardship, medical crises, or other severe personal difficulties. The auction is the Foundation’s primary annual fundraising mechanism beyond ticket sales, and the items it auctions are genuine one-of-a-kind pieces of festival history.
Every signed placard, every festival poster, every stage-used setlist in this auction is a piece of the most storied jazz festival in American history — and every bid supports the musicians who make it possible.
Official Artist Campus Signs — Hand-Lettered by Nan Parati
These are the placards that line the festival grounds at Newport every summer, announcing the artists who will take each stage across the festival weekend. What makes them genuinely irreplaceable is who makes them: Nan Parati, the festival’s official sign-writer for over 30 years, hand-letters every single placard with a craft and a personal style that have become part of Newport’s visual identity over three decades. Each placard up for auction has been autographed by the performing artists whose names Parati lettered on them, creating objects that combine her artistry with the signatures of the musicians who played beneath them. These are not printed reproductions or official merchandise. They are working documents of a specific festival weekend, made by hand by one person who has been doing it for longer than most of the current artists have been performing.
Signed Memorabilia — Posters, Photographs, Setlists, and Merchandise
The broader auction includes autographed limited-edition festival posters from the 2026 edition, rare photographs from the festival grounds and backstage, stage-used setlists from artists who performed this past summer at Fort Adams, and artist-signed merchandise. A stage-used setlist is a particular kind of object: it sat on the stage while the music was happening, it was touched by the musicians who played from it, and it carries the specific information of what was performed in what order on what night. It is not a souvenir. It is a working document of a live performance, and the live performance is where everything in jazz actually lives.
Every dollar raised in this auction goes directly to the Newport Festivals Foundation’s two core charitable programs:
The artist campus signs deserve their own explanation because they depend on a person most people have never heard of who has been essential to what Newport looks and feels like for over three decades. Nan Parati has been hand-lettering the signs, placards, and visual materials for the Newport Jazz Festival and Newport Folk Festival for more than 30 years. Her lettering style has become so identified with the Newport aesthetic that it is, for many longtime festivalgoers, as much a part of the experience as the music itself. The placards she creates are not simply functional signage. They are works of calligraphic art that happen to serve a practical purpose, made with the same attention and craft that the musicians on stage are bringing to their performances. Owning one of Nan Parati’s placards from the Newport Jazz Festival is owning a piece of that visual tradition, signed by the artist who performed beneath it. There is nothing else quite like it in the jazz world.
The Newport Jazz Festival official benefit auction is live now. Bid on signed artist placards, festival posters, stage-used setlists, and rare signed memorabilia. Every dollar supports music education and musician relief through the Newport Festivals Foundation.
Bid Now at NewportJazz.orgThe Newport Jazz Festival and The Improv Café share the same fundamental conviction about what this music is and how it should be experienced: live, in a room, with no approximations and no substitutes. The recordings we broadcast on this station include performances captured at Newport across seven decades. Miles Davis’s Newport comeback. Duke Ellington’s legendary 1956 night. John Coltrane on that stage in the years when he was at the peak of what he was discovering. These are not just recordings. They are documents of the kind of live music events that the Newport Festivals Foundation is committed to sustaining into the future through its education and artist relief work.
Bidding in this auction is a direct investment in that future. It closes Tuesday, October 27, at 11:59 AM Eastern. Do not wait until Monday night.