Montreal Jazz Festival 34th Edition


The program for the 34th Montreal Jazz Festival is starting to populate. For those unfamiliar with the largest jazz festival in the world, the show is 10 days with 3000 musicians for all over the world. There's 1000 concerts on 8 stages and 15 concert halls, 2/3rds of them being free. 2 million people from all over the world will attend. If you think this sounds crazy and unorganized think again. It's amazing how well this event is run. They block off a huge portion of the city. It's a very beautiful and safe city and the food is amazing. I have nothing to do with this festival. I'm actually a native New Yorker. I was fortunate to have gone to the festival 10 years ago and was so blown away I kept going back.

I'm going to try and update this weekly as the list of artists continues to populate. The festival is at the end of June. So far as of the first week of sign up............

UPCOMING PERFORMERS

Artists are sorted by first name
A
ACS
Aretha Franklin
B
Belle & Sebastian
Bill Stewart
Brian Blade
Buddy Guy
C
Cordâme
D
Danilo Pérez
Dave Douglas
Dorothée Berryman
E
Eric Bibb
Esperanza Spalding
F
François Bourassa
G
Geri Allen
H
Habib Koité & Bamada
J
Joe Lovano
Joey Baron
John Patitucci
John Scofield
L
Ladysmith Black Mambazo
Lawrence Fields
Linda Oh
S
Scott Colley
T
Terri Lyne Carrington
W
Wayne Shorter
Wynton Marsalis
donjr
All jazz festivals are the same. They originated as a jazz festival and then realized they could bring in more money if they included other genres. When the Montreal Jazz Festival started Miles was still alive and played the festival every year. You will notice this if you go because they can't seem to let go of him. His image is everywhere in Montreal.

How many people would show up in this day and age for jazz alone? It wouldn't even be worth it for the musicians. The beauty of a jazz festival is that it does attract the best of today's living jazz artists. One thing you won't see is pop or country. You will see blues and in the case of Montreal, loads of world artists. What ever the case, you're not ever going to see more jazz in one place. Never have, never will.
There is a pretty good iPad/smart phone app available that updates all year long with live shows in and around Montreal. It is available on the festival web site.

However, it has not been update yet with the info here.

I have seen some amazing jazz artist perform at the Festival. Herbie Hancock, Keith Jarrett, Jack de johnette, Dave Brubeck, Tord Gustavsen, to name a few.

Montreal is great city specially in the summer. Right now we are freezing are .... off.