"The truest expression of a people is in its dance and music." - Agnes de Mille
By Patrick Driessen
Early October I had an exciting dream about organising an indoor jazz festival, which would bring thousands of people closer to some of the best jazz and blues artists from around the world!
My dream was based on some of my own past experiences; as a child my parents took me to many jazz festivals in Holland and I witnessed some of the biggest musicians and vocalists in the world perform at the famous North Sea Jazz Festival; the world's largest indoor jazz festival.
Keeping the dream alive, I gave it some more thoughts during the day. Soon I realised that in Australia (where I live since the end of 2005) a large scale international jazz festival was missing, causing many people to miss out on unique and long-lasting entertainment experiences and musical inspiration.
After interviewing various people about their personal experiences in attending the North Sea Jazz Festival (Netherlands), Montreux Jazz Festival (Switzerland) or Montreal Jazz Festival (Canada) I gained enough insights: these festivals had a deep, inspiring, positive and long-lasting impact on their audiences!
For a lot of young musicians the artists they saw performs at these festivals gave them the inspiration to invest even more time and energy to become a better musician whether as amateur of professional. These live jazz festivals also had a very positive social impact and further research showed the commercial viability of a large scale international jazz and blues festival. So why had nobody ever dared to do it in Australia?
In pitching my festival vision to various jazz experts and music festival organisers I received a common feedback: this concept is a gap in the Australian market and will potentially create massive meaning to thousands of people; festival patrons, industry experts as well as young musicians and professional artists.
So actually this was about inspiring, educating, entertaining and helping other
people! Perfectly in line with my personal beliefs, passion and drive! Hence why I also organise the successful bi-monthly Sydney Startup Networking Party series, the legendary Holland House events during the FIFA World Cup and various other regular parties and events; all focused on helping people succeed by bringing them together, inspiring them and entertaining them!I knew enough and was starting up a new mission! Inspired by the idea of creating a new large scale international jazz festival, I turned myself into a festival director! After creating and optimising the vision and goals for my new international jazz and blues festival, I teamed up with various passionate musicians and festival experts to create a strong core team, allowing me to quickly turn my dream into reality.
From day one my biggest supporter has been my American - Dutch speaking - fri
end Steve Clisby who – as musician, vocalist and composer – has performed at many concert venues and festivals around the world with the likes of Tina Turner, Chaka Khan, Level 42, Carlos Santana, Hot Chocolade and the Crusaders. He immediately understood and supported the vision and bigger picture for the creation of my festival as new Australian hallmark event.Still the question why nobody else had done or tried to do this before kept floating through my mind.... I started asking other people this same question and all I could find out was that most likely nobody had ever tried to do it because of the risks involved in staging such a large international live music festival, the lack of vision, lack of funds to make the required investments, etc.
This motivated me even more and I started to kick some real ass! Now a few weeks further down the line and after having spent most of my time on it, I managed to turn my dream into reality!
So far only a few people in the world know about it, because they have become part of it.... Besides this small group of people you're the first ones to know! In January we'll tell the rest of the world about our international jazz festival in Sydney. So here we go!
The Opportunity
Sydney has not had an international jazz festival in name since the 1990s. The Sydney Global Jazz & Blues Festival will be the first large scale - truly international - jazz and blues festival being held in Sydney since that period.
The Sydney Global Jazz & Blues Festival will help challenge for the title of Australia's jazz capital and will put Australia and Sydney on the global map with other prestigious international jazz festivals such as the North Sea Jazz Festival (Netherlands), and Montreux Jazz Festival (Switzerland).
Creating a New Original
Our festival will be setting new trends and quality standards in each and every aspect. It will be the most prestigious, most exclusive and most sophisticated jazz and blues festival in the world! Instead of trying to copy the leaders in the global market place, we will create a new industry leading original, which can be qualified as new international hallmark event and ranked as ’super premium’; serving the top-end of the market.
The Key Drivers
The key principals and drivers for the organisation to stage these events are to:
- Inspire
- Educate
- Unite
- Innovate
- Entertain.
The annual Sydney Global Jazz & Blues Festival will provide a broad and compelling range of the contemporary jazz music scene incorporating funk, soul, big band swing, blues, jazz-rock, jazz-fusion, gospel, R&B and New Orleans jazz sounds, brought to you by a selection of some of the best musicians and vocalists from around the globe. It will potentially be the largest indoor jazz & blues festival in the Australasian region ever.
The specially created indoor Jazz Village festival venue will have 8 performance stages for over 125 live acts and can cater for over 50,000 guests over the three festival days.
The festival starts with the Sydney Jazz Gala on Wednesday evening followed by three vibrant festival days (Friday – Sunday) and the Kids Jazz Festival taking place on Saturday and Sunday morning.
The Artistic Program
Musicians, vocalists and entertainment acts will come from Poland, Germany, Netherlands, Italy, Belgium, Israel, United Kingdom, Bulgaria, Canada, United States, Chile, Cuba, Brazil, Mexico, South Africa, Ethiopia, Egypt, South Korea, Indonesia, Japan, New Zealand, and Australia. A true global program!
We will mix five different programs with artists and acts:
- World-class Hero’s & Legends
- Up & Coming Overseas Stars
- Best Australian Professional Artists
- Young International & Australian Talents
- Australian & International Entertainment Acts.
All festival performances will be staged at existing venues and specially build temporary marquis tents within the Entertainment Quarter and Hordern Pavillion premises in Sydney’s Moore Park; allowing us to create Jazz Village!
Jazz Village will be the largest and most intimate indoor festival venue possible; incorporating existing heritage listed buildings, existing modern buildings and specially build marquis tents. Between all these venues, large tents will be build to create a huge indoor Jazz Village, which can cater for thousands of festival patrons per day.
International Young Talent Program
One of the key drivers of our global jazz & blues festival is to create an artistic program in which we give selected young talents the opportunity to perform for a large audience, perform together with professional artists from around the world and attend workshops and master classes hosted by some of these great international artists.
Part of our Young Talent Program is the creation of a Young Talent Big Band, for which the selection already has started. Our artistic team and festival ambassadors are sourcing the best overseas and Australian based talents, so they can mix various generations of talented musicians, resulting in some of the most compelling performances on the stages of our festival.
"Jazz does not belong to one race or culture, but is a gift that America has given the world." - Ahmad Alaadeen
With musical and entrepreneurial regards,
Patrick
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