Posted by
Frankie Gale
16 events across 14 venues over 6 weeks and counting...
Summary Guildford Jazz is teaming up with local music venue, bars, cafes and restaurants across Guildford to present a celebration of the best in UK and local jazz and soul over September and October. In addition to ticketed events with leading UK jazz and soul artists, the festival will include lots of free events with talented local musicians performing in pop-up venues all across town.
More details can be found in the attached flyer and on the Guildford Jazz website
UK National Jazz & Soul Stars
Guildford Jazz has always been about bringing the best, established UK jazz artists to Guildford. Why go to Ronnie Scott’s when you can have the same experience with us in Guildford? So its first ever jazz and soul festival naturally includes many of the sort of artists who you could see at major venues and festivals across the UK.
Headline acts include
Natalie Williams Soul Family, who make a rare appearance outside their monthly sold out residency at Ronnies, and Bill Laurance, the 5 times Grammy award winning pianist and founding member of Snarky Puppy.
Other national artists already booked to appear include:
• Jazz pianists Jason Robello and Gwilym Simcock • Award winning saxophonist Tony Kofi and the Organisation • Rising jazz stars vocalist Emily Masser and saxophonist Alex Clarke • BBC Radio Jazz Records Requests presenter Alyn Shipton talking about his latest book and performing music from the Jerry Mulligan Quartets as part of the Guildford Book Festival • The Soul Sanctuary Gospel Choir • Guitarist Pete Roth
Multiple, Eclectic Venues
Alongside Guildford Jazz’s traditional bases at The Guildford Pavilion, the Stoke pub and the University’s Performing Arts studio, the Festival will range far and wide in big and small venues across town from G Live, through streets and shopping malls (the High Street and Tunsgate Square) and heritage buildings (the Guildhall and St Saviours) to bars (Rogues, Growlers and Cans ), restaurants (Coppa Club Shardana) and cafes (Solar Sisters)
Why a jazz and soul festival now?
Guildford Jazz’s founder, jazz bass player Marianne Windham explains: Four years ago, in 2020, we decided to take on a new challenge, organising the first locally curated weekend Guildford Jazz Festival at the Electric Theatre. A week before it was due to start, we were hit with the pandemic and lockdown. Since then, Guildford Jazz has continued to grow and thrive. We have teamed up with new venues like the Boileroom and the Stoke and received our first Arts Council England grant. We have a regular and enthusiastic audience at our regular events, our outdoor festivals, like Wood Street, are continuing to attract large audiences. and we have more and more local players attending our regular jazz jams at The Britannia. We pride ourself on being part of our community as well as having a reputation as one of the leading jazz clubs in the country. Having said that, there are many lovers of live music locally who are still unaware of the world class music available on their doorstep. Rather than sit back and wait for them to stumble across us, we thought we would take the plunge and commit to a major high-profile Festival to bring great live jazz and soul directly to music lovers who may not have heard of us, in venues across Guildford and in the streets, churches, restaurants, cafes and bars, wherever they normally hang out. So today I am proud to announce the first ever Guildford Jazz & Soul Festival! We hope that the festival will bring the joy of live music to new listeners, bring more people back into the centre of town and be the next step in our journey to make Guildford a UK hub of creative live music”.
Free Events
Many of the events in the Festival featuring local musicians will be free to attend. Guildford Jazz is a not for profit, community interest company and we will be providing a lot of the music for free for the benefit of the wider community and smaller business owners of Guildford. Watch this space for an announcement next month of the local artists line up and where and when they will be appearing.
More Information
The six week- long Festival which is sponsored by local law firm Stevens & Bolton, kicks off on September 4th and runs until October 17th More information about Guildford Jazz , the festival and how to book tickets can be found on the Guildford Jazz website