Manchester Jazz Festival – Serviced Apartments

Manchester Jazz Festival is an annual 9-day-long festival focused on showcasing contemporary jazz from the North West of England and beyond. Serviced City Pads.

The 15th Manchester Jazz Festival will take place from 23 to 31 July in Manchester City Centre.

The Manchester Jazz Festival was created in 1996 as a one-day showcase and has grown into a 9-day event, with 60 gigs and 300 musicians planned for July 2009.

Key Dates and figures for the festival:

1996: 1st Manchester Jazz Festival – 1 day, 1 venue, 10 bands.

2000: 1st new jazz work comissioned by the festival

2003: 1st mjf all-day finale in Albert Square, with 5 bands, 50 musicians and 5,000 attenders

2006: 1st ever jazz festival podcast in the UK – won the Independent’s Critics Choice

Over 80 bands will play across 8 city centre venues, at all times of the day and night – indoors and out! mjf is all about trying something new and this years it’s easier than ever to discover a new world of music, unlike any other on the festival circuit.

2010 includes musical firsts from Britain and abroad, inlcuding the mjf originals commissions surroundings, a new antiphonal suite for jazz  orchestra composed by Manchester trumpeter Neil Yates. International debuts come from Spanish pianist Baldo Martinez and Franco German duo Daniel Erdmann and Frances Le Bras. Other highlights include jazz ‘supergroup’ Simcock/Walker/Swallow/Nussbaum, featuring Salford born guitarist Mike Walker, and Phil Bancrofts multi media Home-Small as the World which features one musician’s contribution beamed directly by wi-fi from his Manchester home. Please call Serviced City Pads on 0844 335 8866.
As you’d expect, Band on the Wall, Manchester’s legendary live music venue, is one of mjf’s main venues, with performances fromthe Indo-Jazz fusions of ex-Mancunian clarinettist Arun Ghosh, to the city’s most revered DJ, Mr Scruff. Even ’80 icon Kid Creole makes a comeback! Also at the venue, the BBC’s flagship jazz radio programme Jazz on 3 will broadcast live from the festival on Monday 26 July.

A multitude if jazz vocalist, all with their own personal approach to jazz, featuring in the line up: Terry Shaltiel has the blues, Rodina an Irish lilt, Monika Lidke her Polish folk songs, Alice Zawadzki her Jewish folk songs and An Jacobs her French chanson.

At the other end of the spectrum, there is music for the Jazz aficionado too: mjf champions artists who are crossing the boundaries and pushing the music to new limits: The Golden Age of Steam features and unusual line up of the bass clarinet, organ and drums, and their soundworld – nothing to do with trains – evokes swirling soundscapes and contemporary classical music. Jim Hart studied and unsual instrument – the vibraphone – at Chetham’s School of Music in Manchester; now he’s one of the UK’s leading exponents and he’s joined forces with Ralph Alessi, the innovative New York based trumpeter, for his gig to launch the festival on 23 July.

A whole day is devoted to the energetic and vital rhythms of Afro-Carribean music. From 2.00pm on Sunday 25 July, take part in special percussion and dance workshops in the Festival Pavillion in Albert Square, and at 8.00pm catch the double bill featuring two of the north west’s foremost ensembles of this genre: Dispora, a young 11 piece band with dynamic orchestrations, and Mojito, with authentic Cuban vocalists and a lively percussion section. All you need to add is the rum and the cigar. Short stay in Manchester with Serviced City Pads.mjf introduces continues in the afternoons with 6 new young artists from Greater Manchester launching their careers at the Festival Pavillion in Albert Square. New to the festival this year is a series of afternoon tea events in the award winning French restaurant at the Grade II-listed Midland Hotel.

Steve Mead, mjf’s Artistic Director, says: ‘There’s an incredible amount of wonderful music in this year’s festival and so much for free. Not only that, but such a wide mixture of sounds and styles, from twice BBC Jazz Award-winner and singer/songwriter Liane Carroll, bringing her relaxed pop and blues influences into the mix, to the most challenging of artist’s at the cutting edge of jazz, like Stuart McCallum (Cinematic Orchestra) and the punky Trio VD. mjf guarantees you a memorable time, whatever your taste’. Serviced City Pads supply Serviced Apartment Accommodation throughout Manchester.