Edinburgh’s globally renowned festivals are gearing up for another spectacular year, with Friday’s launch of the 2023 Edinburgh Jazz & Blues Festival.
Last night Council Leader Cammy Day, Culture Minister Christina McKelvie and Jason Rust, Chair of Edinburgh Jazz & Blues Festival, launched the Festival alongside performances from Baila Venezuela and Marianne McGregor.
Taking place over ten days from 14-23 July the festival will include over 110 concerts featuring: top Scottish bands, international stars, and festival favourites alongside new names.
Tickets are on sale and can be purchased by calling 0131 226 0013 or through the festival website.
Council Leader Cammy Day said: “I was delighted to attend yesterday’s launch as both Council Leader and as the newest Board Member of the Edinburgh Jazz & Blues Festival.
“I am proud that our residents and visitors are able to take advantage of such an internationally eclectic and exciting festival.
“The Council is a proud supporter and funder of the EJBF and this year, I am pleased to see events held in every area of the city – from established music venues to churches and community centres – and spanning the length of our new tram route from the Pianodrome in Ocean Terminal to performances at Edinburgh Airport.
“I’d also like to thank the EJBF Board, the artists and everyone else who has contributed to the festival”.
Jason Rust, Chair of Edinburgh Jazz & Blues Festival said: “We are absolutely delighted to launch our 45th Festival.
“There is something for everyone in our ten-day programme and in communities across the city. We are really grateful to our funders, including the Council. Let’s make this a Festival to remember.”
Edinburgh Jazz & Blues Festivalis back for 2021 with an exciting programme showcasing the amazing music coming out of Scotland! We can’t wait to welcome you online and in-person at Assembly Roxy.
Live Assembly Roxy
We are delighted we can welcome some small, socially-distanced audiences to Assembly Roxy over the ten days of the festival. We have 20 concerts with live audiences. Tickets are priced at £20 per person and are sold in bubbles of 1 or 2 people to allow us to seat you safely. Please note that our capacity is very limited so book early!
All of our live concerts will also be live-streamed so, if you can’t make it in person, you can buy a digital ticket for £10.
20 pre-recorded concerts
In addition to our live concerts, we also have 20 pre-recorded online concerts, each costing £10. All our online content is available for 72 hours so you can watch at your leisure!
Concerts will be sold individually, but you can buy a Festival Passgiving access to all 40 online concerts, plus a few exclusives, for just £40!
Three youth arts and civil society organisations have received a total of £223,530 to help the recovery of youth arts provision across the city of Edinburgh, ensuring employment for youth arts practitioners and creative opportunities for children and young people continue despite the COVID-19 pandemic.
Minister for Children and Young People, Maree Toddsaid: “Youth music and youth arts organisations across Scotland are playing an important role in the lives of young people during these difficult times.
“This funding will widen access to high quality opportunities for young people, allowing them to participate and engage with music and other art forms. It will also provide welcome employment opportunities to more than 200 youth arts practitioners, including freelance musicians, across Scotland.”
Genevieve Kay-Gourlay, Depute to Director, North Edinburgh Artssaid: “North Edinburgh Arts (NEA) is delighted to be awarded funding from Creative Scotland to deliver a youth arts residency programme, in partnership with Independent Arts Projects (IAP), for freelance artists and creative practitioners working across a range of artforms.
“The programme will empower freelance arts practitioners to take the lead in the design and delivery of accessible creative opportunities for children and young people living in Muirhouse and North Edinburgh.
“Artists will be supported through mentoring, advice and training, and will have access to a regular peer forum; trying out ideas as part of new or longer-term piece of research and development, whilst strengthening and broadening longer-term connections with the individuals and organisations involved.”
Paul Carberry, Director for Scotland, Action for Children said: “We are very pleased to have secured funding from Creative Scotland to undertake youth arts projects within our services in Scotland.
“This money will allow our services to deliver a range of arts projects, with the young people themselves deciding the arts they want to explore.
“This fund will also enable us to work collaboratively with a range of artists across the country, allowing the children and young people we work with to benefit from a rich and diverse creative experience to support them.”
The organisations will open for individual grant applications early in the new year.
Gaynor Milne, SambaYaBambasaid: “SambaYaBamba are delighted to be involved in this exciting new way of distributing funds from Creative Scotland directly to practitioners in the street band network.
“This will open up opportunities for freelancers to create their own youth projects, with support from our organisation. We’re really excited to welcome applications from individuals in early 2021, and look forward to seeing the new projects that emerge from this process.”
Giles Agis, Carnival and Community Manager, Edinburgh Jazz and Blues Festivalsaid: “Edinburgh Jazz and Blues Festival’s Small Grants Fund project ‘Routes to Roots’ will see a diverse range of freelance musicians, dancers, circus artists, spoken word performers, street theatre artists and carnival costume makers re-imagine Edinburgh Festival Carnival 2021 through ‘artists led’ projects.
“The selected artists will work with children and young people across Edinburgh’s diverse communities, creating new mobile performance work which will animate our annual carnival parade, or static work which will be performed in Princes Gardens after the carnival has finished.”
Lorraine McLaren, Director, Wheatley Foundationsaid: “Many people in our communities just don’t have the opportunity or the means to access the arts. We’re always keen to find new ways to support tenants and their families to take part in art, drama or music and this tranche of funding will enable us to do exactly that.
“We’re looking forward to working with Creative Scotland and artists to bring some great projects to our communities right across central and the south of Scotland.”
Iain Munro, CEO, Creative Scotlandsaid: “These vital emergency funds being delivered by Creative Scotland on behalf of the Scottish Government are ensuring that creative opportunities continue to exist for young people and across Scotland at this critical time and provide important work for freelance artists whose opportunities have been so severely impacted by Covid-19.”
Action for Children has received £50,000, Edinburgh International Jazz and Blues Festival £30,000, North Edinburgh Arts £36,025, SambaYaBamba £27,505 and Wheatley Foundation £50,000.
These organisations are five of 18 across Scotland to have received a share of share in over £690K funding.
The full list of recipients is:
Organisation (Trading name)
Local Authority Area
Funding Amount
Aberdeen City Council, Creative Learning
Aberdeen
£50,000
Action for Children
Edinburgh, North Lanarkshire, South Lanarkshire, Clackmannanshire
The Small Grants Scheme is the second strand of funding to be announced as part of the Scottish Government’s £3million funding package for Youth Arts, being delivered through Creative Scotland. At least £1.2million has already been distributed through the Youth Arts Targeted Fund and £50,000 assigned to the Nurturing Talent: New Routes Fund.
Updates on all emergency funds are being published regularly on this website and publicised through media and social media communications.
Image: Zoo Arts participants, project led by Alice Betts at North Edinburgh Arts
RESIDENTS at a care home have been treated to an exclusive digital concert by one of Scotland’s most exciting jazz stars, Georgia Cécile.
Georgia, with her boyfriend and jazz pianist Fraser Urquhart, pre-recorded a 30 minute performance of her favourite songs specifically for customers of Blackwood’s Broom Court care home in Stirling.
The 31-year-old, who was named best vocalist at the Scottish Jazz Awards last year, was eager to get involved with the project when she heard about it through the Edinburgh Jazz and Blues Festival.
Georgia said: “It’s been a crazy year for musicians and performers across the world. I really miss performing live so I was thrilled when the opportunity came up to perform virtually for a new audience at Broom Court.
“Together, Fraser and I pulled together a set list of some of our favourite tunes and we self-recorded the event from our home. The Edinburgh Jazz and Blues Festival and Blackwood were amazing in working out all of the IT requirements to make sure residents at Broom Court could enjoy the concert.”
The Edinburgh Jazz and Blues Festival worked with Georgia and Blackwood to record, create and stream the concert direct to Broom Court care home, which accommodates and cares for residents with a wide range of disabilities.
Agnese Daverio, programme and production manager with the Edinburgh Jazz and Blues Festival, said: “Organising digital concerts has made us realise how many people might not be able to access concerts and live music – whether we’re in a pandemic or not.
“It’s really important for us to reach out further and share this music with people who can’t get to venues, because they should be able to enjoy and get involved with jazz.
“We’re always looking to challenge any preconception that enjoying jazz might not be accessible, for whatever reason – whether that’s financial, physical, or even geographical limitations.
“Bringing jazz directly to the residents at Blackwood is really important and part of the overall work we’re trying to do – bringing jazz to audiences who might not have the chance to enjoy it live. We’re looking forward to organising future concerts with Blackwood.”
Broom Court is one of Blackwood’s three care homes, which are designed to provide integrated accommodation and care for customers with a range of physical disabilities. 24 hour care is also offered for customers with more complex disabilities who have higher support needs.
Flora Hay, Care Services Manager at Broom Court, said: “The jazz concert was fantastic and thoroughly enjoyed by our residents. Due to social distancing we had a small number of residents attend the concert, which was shown on a brand-new smart TV we had installed for the occasion.
“Our residents absolutely adored listening to Georgia and Fraser perform – one of our residents in particular was overjoyed and said she loved it. She has quite complex needs and really enjoys music, so it was a really lovely event to organise.”
Blackwood aims to help people live their life to the full, by providing services which support individuals in exercising their right to have choice and control over their lives in a home which is suitable and adaptable to their needs.
As Blackwood works in 29 of Scotland’s 32 local authorities, it is more widely dispersed than most other care or housing providers and has embraced the challenges of taking housing and care into innovative areas at a time when funding is increasingly limited.
We are very excited to present an online Festival to mark the dates of the 2020Edinburgh Jazz & Blues Festival.
From 23 to 26 July this year, we will stream a variety of gigs across our website and social media channels – all for free! We look forward to sharing more details of the programme with you in the coming weeks – keep an eye on the website!
At this time of year, many of you would be buying tickets for the July festival. Each year income from ticket sales represents 45% of our annual income and the cancellation of the festival will result in the loss of all earned ticket income in 2020. As a charity, we rely on the generous support of our funders and donors to help us bring this annual celebration of Jazz and Blues to life.
Would you consider supporting us through this difficult period? You can do so by making a donation or, for those of you who would like to get closer to our work, we are very excited to launch a new EJBF Patron Scheme.
All funds raised will help EJBF to begin planning for the 2021 Edinburgh Jazz & Blues Festival and Edinburgh Festival Carnival, as well as supporting our learning programmes, such as our online schools, and our talent development programmes for Scottish artists.
To make a donation or to find out more about becoming an EJBF Patron please click here.
Edinburgh Jazz & Blues Festival / Edinburgh Festival Carnival will NOT go ahead in July due to Covid-19 Pandemic – but there’s an online extravaganza to look forward to next week.
First, and most importantly, all of us at Edinburgh Jazz & Blues Festival hope this message finds you and your loved ones well.
We care deeply about the health and wellbeing of our audiences, musicians and staff, and we have of course been monitoring the Coronavirus situation closely over the last few weeks by following government, NHS and Public Health Scotland advice, and are continually reviewing our position as an organisation.
With this in mind we will not be presenting the 43rd edition of Edinburgh Jazz & Blues Festival in July. We will also not present the 9th Edinburgh Festival Carnival.
Chair of Edinburgh Jazz & Blues Festival, Councillor Jason Rust said: “The last few weeks have reinforced to me how special live music is, from intimate gigs to great sonic adventures. The sense of community that live music creates is special too as audiences unite with musicians to share a moment.
“I believe music can continue to unite us and bring joy in these worrying times, and we are working on how we can still share that with you in the coming weeks via our online platforms. Our staff are unearthing interesting footage and content to share and working with closely with Scottish musicians to bring you new digital content which is an artistic response to the times.
“As soon as we are able and it is determined safe to do, we will be back presenting live concerts.
“In closing, we’d like to thank our funders, partners, participants and audiences for their loyalty, support and understanding”.
HOWEVER – SOME GOOD NEWS …
For the first time ever, the Edinburgh Jazz & Blues Festival presents a 12 hour online Scottish blues extravaganza featuring established stars like Maggie Bell and Tim Elliott as well as new names like John McKenzie and Liz Jones.
We’re asking to support musicians if you can – since the pandemic started, their livelihoods have been put on hold due to the suspension of live events. We will be highlighting ways you can support them – please give generously if you can.
This Saturday (13 July) the Grassmarket will become home to the biggest party in Edinburgh with multiple stages, non-stop entertainment and a host of bands.
And to top it all off, it’s all FREE! The fun starts at 1pm.
The Edinburgh Jazz & Blues Festival is in a festive mood. The programme for the 40th anniversary edition – which takes place from Friday 13th to Sunday 22nd July – features promising newcomers, returning music legends and a host of famous names making their Edinburgh debut – and the festival’s coming down to Muirhouse!Continue reading Mmmm, nice: Jazz Festival programme launched
Edinburgh Jazz & Blues Festival announces its 2017 Blues programme
With over 20 blues concerts this year’s programme spans Southern blues, Delta blues, Mississippi blues, Chicago blues, electric blues to acoustic blues. The cast list includes American stars and the best homegrown talent.Continue reading Woke up this mornin’ … to a packed Blues programme
