Vancouver International Jazz Festival
The Vancouver International Jazz Festival is a music festival in the Canadian city of Vancouver that takes place for ten days at the end of June each year.
The festival emerged from the local jazz scene that had formed around the CFRO-FM radio station in the early 1980s. In 1984 the Pacific Jazz and Blues Association was founded , which organized the first festival for jazz and blues . From the organization the Coastal Jazz and Blues Society developed , which was able to win sponsors and entered into a partnership with the Expo 86 . As part of this world exhibition , the Vancouver International Jazz Festival took place for the first time, at which Miles Davis , Wynton Marsalis , Bobby McFerrin , Tito Puente , Tony Williams , Albert Collins and John Mayall and the Bluesbreakers performed, among others .
Since then, the festival has grown to be the largest of its kind in British Columbia . It is organized by over 1000 volunteers. The festival includes a total of 400 different performances, including 130 free concerts. The average number of visitors is 460,000. Free jazz and improvisational musicians - especially from Europe - regularly perform at this festival , for example Han Bennink , Theo Jörgensmann , Achim Kaufmann , Ig Henneman or Arjen Gorter .