Edinburgh Jazz & Blues Festival moves online for its 43rd edition, with new sets recorded during lockdown, solo home videos, selections from the festival’s video archive, talks, conferences, and late-night DJ sets,writes Rob Adams.
Georgia Cecile
Running from Thursday 23 to Sunday 27 July, the programme features leading players from the thriving Scottish scene alongside musicians from the U.S., Norway, Sweden, Italy, Belgium and the Netherlands.
Among the newly recorded music are sets from the award-winning Playtime Collective, popular swing quartet Rose Room and saxophonist Harry Weir’s explosive Trio AKU!
Saxophonist Martin Kershaw’s homage to American writer David Foster Wallace is reprised, as are drummer Graham Costello’s STRATA Expanded commission from last year’s festival and pianist Fergus McCreadie’s duo sets with recent Parliamentary Jazz Awards Best Newcomer winner, vocalist Luca Manning and former Young Scottish Traditional Musician of the Year, fiddler Charlie Stewart.
Georgia Cecile, Lorna Reid, and Katie Whittaker are among the singers appearing – and the festival’s popular Blues Afternoons feature Sandy Tweeddale, Nicole Smit, Jed Potts, Liz Jones, and Main Street Blues.
International guests include recent stars of the Going Dutch project, Tin Men and the Telephone with their award-winning interactive live concert, London-based New Orleans pianist-singer Joplin Parnell, Nashville bluesman Stacy Mitchhart, Italians T.U.N. (Torino Unlimited Noise), and Belgians ESINAM.
BBC Radio Scotland’s Jazz Nights programme joins the festival on Sunday 26th, with host Seonaid Aitken presenting archive performances from pianists Dave Milligan and Jacob Karlzon and guitarist Haftor Medboe. Medboe also co-presents a special children’s programme with vocalist Jessie Bates, and a series of talks and conferences includes a presentation charting the development of jazz in Edinburgh during the early years.
A new supporters’ scheme, welcoming donations from patrons who want to support the festival is also being launched.
The full programme is available at www.edinburghjazz.co.uk
The full programme is available at www.edinburghjazz.co.uk 
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