It’s hard to put on an arts festival but it’s a lot harder to repeat the feat two years running, and to already have plans for the third. Yet that is exactly what the organisers of the Oxford Jazz Festival have managed.
This year the festival will have more musicians performing in more venues representing a wider range of jazz than has ever happened in the city before. Over the Easter weekend there will jazz echoing off the walls and sinking into the seats of bars, clubs, pubs, theatres and even some of the most august buildings in the university.
Festival organisers Paul Jefferies and Max Mason have explained that apart from wanting to make this a celebration of the extraordinary richness of jazz today, the festival is also a ‘celebration of the city’.
They have managed to organise events in venues right across the city from the funky end of the Cowley Road to the leafy (hopefully by April) streets of Summertown and between these two extremes some of the top bands will be in the Bodleian Library (walls that have never experienced jazz before), the new Ashmolean and the delightful church of St Michael at the Northgate.
Alongside this deliberate intention to soak the whole city with jazz over a period of four days there is also a range of events to suit every pocket and every taste.
There are free gigs such as celebrated American guitarist Adam Rafferty at the Half Moon in St Clement’s through to a full dinner with jazz from Clara Sanabras and the Real Lowdown in the new Ashmolean’s restaurant.
The music itself ranges from a special festival theme of Gypsy jazz to commemorate the great guitarist Django Reinhardt headed by the Gypsy Fire Trio and Dunajska Kapelye Balkan Gypsy Jazz Band through to the contemporary edge from Seb Pipe’s Life Experience and the extraordinarily talented Kairos 4tet headed by saxophonist Adam Waldmann.
This is the band that will have the liberty of making the Convocation Hall in the Bodleian Library hum to the music of the 21st century.
The list of great musicians and bands making the city hot will not fit on a single page. Liane Carroll, a driving force of a singer described as “world class” by the Guardian is at the North Wall as is the powerful combination of saxophonist Dave O’Higgins and Dave Gorman with Pete Oxley, while Oxley’s own home, the Spin, features Mornington Lockett with the ever-wily Dave Gordon.
Over at the Jam Factory the delightfully imaginative pianist Kate Williams teams up with flautist Gareth Lochrane.
From the local scene, Les Musettes, with Alison Bentley, Pete Watson and Kevin Armstrong, are at the Half Moon.
The educational side of the festival has also been extended. There’s a talk by broadcaster Sandy Burnett (who also performs with his own band) and a series of workshops at the North Wall covering all aspects of jazz from vocals and standards through to free improvisation.
Easter is obviously not a time to go beyond the ring road if you are a jazz fan.
For more details, go to oxfordjazzfestival.com
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