The Calgary Jazz Festival Is A Ten-Day Musical Extravaganza

The Calgary Jazz Festival has been giving music lovers an earful for twenty-seven years, and its history reflects the same improvisational flair displayed by its performers.

The backstage story is a colorful but encouraging one, granting musical passion the ultimate victory over adverse circumstances and reminding us all that the art of jazz is what motivates each and every performance.

Created in 1980 as a one-day concert on Prince’s Island that exclusively featured local jazz entertainers, the festival steadily grew over the next eighteen years and eventually became a ten-day musical extravaganza.

Held at various venues in the city, the Calgary Jazz Festival continued to showcase local talent but added international performers to its program, bringing in jazz notables from around the world and attracting even more fans.

Behind all that great music a few sour notes intruded in the form of financial and managerial challenges, and 1998 saw the dissolution of the board governing the festival and the introduction of new sponsors and directors.

This new team seemed to have restored harmony to the enterprise, but in 2006 the Jazz Festival Calgary Society issued a press release announcing that the upcoming festivities had been cancelled.

Just weeks before the scheduled event, the announcement cited insurmountable fiscal woes as the reason for the decision.

Musicians from different parts of the world were already booked for engagements that no longer existed, and local artists were likewise left with nowhere to perform.

This is when a love for jazz came to the rescue, as the grassroots Calgary Jazz Association, commonly known as C-Jazz, stepped up to the stage and took over, ensuring that the music festival would continue, in tune and on budget.

This wasn’t easy, as the last-minute cancellation had left both musicians and local venues scrambling to find new bookings, but thirty acts were successfully rescheduled for the festival on extremely short notice.

Even this drastic situation ended on a sweet note, as the solution for many schedule mix-ups was to pair Calgary performers with international jazz groups and soloists.

The result was a number of imaginative musical collaborations that never would have been heard if circumstances hadn’t made improvisation necessary.

Local musicians had the chance to share the limelight with some of their jazz heroes, and audiences heard some exciting melodic mixes, turning out in standing-room-only crowds at the Beat Nig Jazz and Social Club

During all this reshuffling, the Calgary Jazz Festival was re-christened as the “New” Calgary Jazz Festival to honor the resurrection made possible by C-Jazz’s intervention.

The 2007 jazz festival will take place from June 19th through June 24th, but you’ll have to wait until Wednesday, April 25 to learn who will be performing.

That’s the date for the New 2007 Calgary Jazz Festival Launch Party, which officially kicks off the pre-event anticipation and includes the disclosure of the festival line-up.

It’s at Quincy’s on Seventh at 609 7th Avenue SW, and although we can’t tell you who’ll be at the jazz festival in June, we can tell you who’ll be at its launch party on April 25.

The Joey DeFrancesco Trio headlines the show, and Jake Langley, 2006 National Jazz Awards Guitarist of the Year, will appear.

Special guest Richie Pollack will usher in the night’s entertainment, which also includes other jazz artist.

For tickets to the launch party, visit: Calgary Jazz

Despite some off-key notes in its musical history, the celebration continues its unbroken and long-standing tradition.

Many jazz aficionados made the success of the Calgary Jazz Festival possible by lending their time and support, but all you need to lend is an ear.

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