Celebrating 17 years in the Baxter Concert Hall, the Cape Town Big Band Jazz Festival will be taking place on the 3rd, 4th, 5th and 6th of June 2015.
The festival will showcase 23 school, college and community big bands over the four days.
Participating bands include Pinelands jazz band, Omega Big Band, Wynberg Girls ‘High School Band, Delft Big Band, UCT Big Band, Alumni Big Band, among others. Tickets are available through Computicket, 0861 915 8000- www.computicket.com.
Adults pay R100 or R350 for all four nights. Seniors, students and scholars pay R50.
The festival provides sponsorship and scholarship programmes to students and was founded by the late Dennis Barr in 1999. The festival provides an opportunity for young musicians to display their jazz skills as well as encouraging them to develop their talents further on a tertiary level and is considered a good launching point for those wanting a career in music.
South Africa has a rich history in Jazz music. One of the first major bebop groups in the country in the 1950s was the Jazz Epistles, which consisted of trumpeter Hugh Masekela, saxophonist Kippie Moeketsi and pianist Abdullah Ibrahim (then known as Dollar Brand). This group brought the sounds of United States bebop, created by artists such as Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker and Theolonious Monk to Cape Town with Moeketsi modelling his sound and style on Parker’s .
The festival seeks to foster a positive and encouraging environment for the growth and development of young jazz artists in South African communities.