manchester jazz festival – 15 rainy years…

Ryan Quigley (2009)

When we were putting together the very first festival back in late 1995, we really had no idea that the event would take off as it did, blossoming into an annual celebration of the region’s talented, creative musicians that we now look forward to each year. We were initially a voluntary group of musicians, jazz fans and event organisers with the common goal of wanting to give Manchester a day of great music, demonstrating the wealth of jazz talent in the area.

Our special focus was on contemporary jazz, and on encouraging musicians to create their own repertoire.  This, aside from being a particular passion of ours, was also crucial in determining the character of the festival, ensuring that it didn’t conflict with other major jazz festivals in the region. Wigan, Hayfield and Appleby (the latter 2 alas, no more) focused on traditional or mainstream jazz and we wanted to reflect the cutting edge of Manchester.

We set about raising funds, and talking to several local companies about contributing their services in-kind. With some financial help from the City Council, a brewery, the Musicians Union and the music department of what was then the North West Arts Board, we put together a programme of nine bands, a DJ, off-stage activities and beer sampling – but alas, we forgot to book the portaloos.

98 Per Cent – St Ann's Square (2005)

By staging the event outdoors and for free in the middle of July, our hopes were set on a decent crowd, a hot sunny day and a rave reception. What we hadn’t planned for was having to pull the entire event just as the first saxophonist’s mouthpiece reached his lips, when the 1996 bomb went off and the city centre had to be evacuated. Not deterred, we re-staged the event for August, with the same line-up, the same beer, and the elusive portaloos…

Flushed – and to be honest, surprised – with the success of the event, we realised that there was a need for it to become a regular occurrence: the demand was there from both the musicians and the audience.

In order to expand and keep a lot of the event free, however, it was clear that we were going to need support and long-term investment.

Steve Chadwick - ©Daniel Parker

Working from our front rooms – as many similar events still do – we planned a second festival for June 1997, and earned a number of grants and sponsorships, enabling us to bring in more venues, more bands and spread the activity over a two-week period, which also allowed us to experiment with the format and timing. By 1998, the festival was growing, with exciting plans to introduce more activity into the programme. We moved operations to an office in the city centre, secured more funding and – careful you don’t choke on your chocolate bar here – actually started to get paid. Well, almost.

1999 saw a massive boost for the festival with the Arts Council awarding us the status of a ‘Regularly Funded Organisation’, a status which remains to this day.

In 2000 we were proud to host the national jazz industry conference How to Develop Jazz for Audiences. Or Die at the Bridgewater Hall, which really helped put Manchester jazz on the national map, and led to the birth of getintojazz, an innovative jazz information website for Greater Manchester, which itself grew into NWJazzworks, the regional support agency for jazz in the north west, which we have also been running from the same office since 2005.

2000 also saw us commission our first major work for the festival: New Futures by Richard Iles. Our goal had been to provide a platform for our composers and players to realise ambitious projects, and help raise their profile in doing so. We’ve continued to do this for a decade and now have an official strand, mjf originals, which commissions a new work for the festival each year.

Ed Kainyek and Hugh Thomas (2005) - ©Daniel Parker

The Commonwealth Games were on the horizon in 2001, and we proposed an international exchange programme with jazz festivals in Canada, Barbados and Australia, as part of the programme of cultural events in the run-up to the games. A self-financed trip to the Ottawa Jazz Festival in the summer saw us hob-nobbing with international promoters and artists, and we were delighted to be able to bring a handful of them over to perform at the 2002 festival. This started our international strand, which yearly presents debut performances from international artists in collaboration with our partnering cultural embassies.

In 2003 we were able to work with the Events Unit at the City Council to present a large outdoor finale in Albert Square – and after a fortuitously glorious afternoon, the sight and sound of festive revelry on that summer night attracted over 5,000 people – arguably the largest audience for a jazz event in Manchester up until then.

In 2004 Manchester City Council confirmed us as one of their ‘Pillar Events’ on the calendar – which, aside from the benefits of earmarking regular annual funding, was an endorsement of our achievements to date in giving the city a high-profile music event.

Mike Walker

With 2005 marking our tenth festival, we raised funds to commission four very special and very diverse new pieces of work from regional composers to première at the festival. They achieved national profile, with Guardian reviews, sell out crowds and some wonderful moments. We were also overjoyed that BBC Radio 3 chose to broadcast their flagship contemporary jazz programme Jazz on 3 live from the launch night – a programme which was later voted one of the best programmes of the year. We produced a special commemorative compilation CD (still a few copies left if you’re interested), T-shirts, and presented a sleepless 9 days of non-stop jazz: – widely recognised as our biggest and best festival up until then; certainly the most exhausting for the tiny team of staff and volunteers…

As we passed into our second decade with the 2006 festival, we still held high our commitment to championing the music of North West and its creators. BBC Radio 3 returned, we collaborated with our neighbours the Wigan International Jazz Festival, and – surprisingly – our new podcasts won The Independent’s Critic’s Choice accolade. In 2007 we premiered two major new works which drew together two celebrities of the Manchester jazz scene – Stuart McCallum and Jon Thorne. A highlight of 2008 was the production and premiere of Ropes – a celebration of arguably Manchester’s finest jazz export, guitarist Mike Walker, in the form of a new suite for jazz quintet, (including clarinetist Iain Dixon and US drummer Adam Nussbaum), and 22-piece string orchestra.

In 2010 we’ve moved to slightly bigger premises, appointed new members of staff to help realise our vision and are re-vitalizing the organisation’s profile. New ideas keep coming in, exciting young players emerge and musicians continue to view mjf as a chance to create something special. We’ll carry on doing what we hope we do best: pass it on!

Of course it would be inaccurate to assume that all the gigs and events run as smoothly as they should – indeed some of the more panicky moments have been some of the most memorable (and here it would be the height of indiscretion to name names!). None of us have forgotten a hasty call from one bandleader who had only managed to get as far as Birmingham an hour before their gig – having lost their drum kit and bass player en route…

But the memory of great music presides over everything, which is the reason we’re all still here doing what we do. Now we’re a dedicated team of around four, working most of the year round, building on each year and looking to how we can bring something different to each festival. We want to ensure that the festival remains both a focus for musicians to try out new ideas, and a special, celebratory event for Manchester that we and you can all look forward to year after year.

Steve Mead, Artistic Director, manchester jazz festival