About Us
History
The Guelph Jazz Festival was founded in 1994 by a small group of friends who shared a love of jazz and a commitment to the community of Guelph. A three-time recipient of the Lieutenant Governor's Award for the Arts (2001, 2000 & 1997), the Festival has consistently garnered high praise from international jazz critics for presenting the most compelling and innovative accomplishments in jazz and creative improvised music.
At the same time, we have maintained our commitment to the community through affordable ticket prices and free events.
During our 15-year history we've constantly expanded our offerings to include educational community workshops, a Jazz in the Schools Program, selected winter programming, and the launch of our own recording label IntrepidEar.
The festival has long sponsored a colloquium examining jazz within a cultural context, a dynamic forum that has given fruit to an important new book on improvisation The Other Side of Nowhere: Jazz, Improvisation, and Communities in Dialogue.
In 2000 we commissioned our first original work, Passages, a multi-media jazz opera. In 2003 we commissioned our second jazz opera, Québécité, a multi-cultural romance with music by D.D. Jackson and libretto by George Elliott Clarke. In 2004 the Festival commissioned a fairy tale, In Place of Wishes, for children of all ages, written by Robert Pennee with improvised music provided live onstage by five musicians.
The festival's founding and current artistic director is Ajay Heble of Guelph.
The Guelph Outstallations
The 2009 Guelph Jazz Festival included three "outstallations" – innovative improvisations in the streets and parks of Guelph. You can catch the flavour of two of these events in the videos below. Three Parades was the conjunction of three marching bands, in unison with the carillon at St. George's Church downtown; the full nine-minute event is shown in the video below. Percussion in the Park was a free improvisation on playground equipment, of which you can see an excerpt from one of the two performances below.
Three Parades • Percussion in the Park
