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. We are now in our sixteenth year of mjf, a home-grown celebration of the region’s vibrant music scene and unique personalities.

Our special focus was on contemporary jazz and on encouraging musicians to create their own repertoire.  This is a passion of ours and was also crucial in determining the character of the festival – we wanted to reflect the cutting edge of Manchester.

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

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.

By 1998, the festival was growing, with exciting plans to introduce more activity into the programme. 1999 saw a massive boost for the festival with the Arts Council awarding us the Regularly Funded status, (we have recently been awarded the status of National Portfolio Organisation)

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.

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 new work for the festival each year.

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. This sparked 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 – an endorsement of our achievements to date in giving the city a high-profile music event. We are still one of the few events in receipt of local authority funding and now part of Unmissable Manchester.

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 and sell out crowds. 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, 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…

Since then we have continued to grow and to increase our ambition. In addition to BBC Radio 3 we’ve collaborated with Wigan International Jazz Festival; our new podcasts won The Independent’s Critic’s Choice accolade, and we’ve premiered major new works with celebrities of the Manchester jazz scene, Stuart McCallum, Jon Thorne and arguably Manchester’s finest jazz export, guitarist Mike Walker.

In 2010 we moved to bigger premises, appointed new members of staff to help realise our vision and re-vitalized 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!

Steve Mead, Artistic Director, manchester jazz festival