Guelph Jazz Festival
6 DUBLIN STREET SOUTH, #202 N1H 4L5 Guelph, ON, Canada

During this period when we cannot safely do what we do best present live music we have conceived of an uncommon way to (re-)experience our 2019 Festival programming. Echoes.xyz is a mobile app platform on which users create geolocated soundwalks. The GJF will be launching its first Echoes soundwalk on 30 October, after which it will be freely available to anyone with a smartphone. How it works: Download the free Echoes.xyz app to your iOS or Android smartphone. As of 30 O...ctober, you can access the free Guelph Jazz Festival 2019 Soundwalk (stream or download). As you move through Downtown Guelph, in the vicinity of various Festival venues and other sites, your location will trigger clips of music by 2019 GJF artists as well as commentary about the festival (headphones are recommended for higher sound quality). A map of Downtown will show the various sites, which link to images and text about the artists in question. More information at GJF website. Link in bio.

2016 Guelph Jazz Festival Were you there? Share your memories with us to be part of the collection

Pianist, organist, vocalist, and composer Amina Claudine Myers was born in Arkansas and was an early member of Chicago’s Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians. Her work synthesises jazz, gospel, and extended improvisation in a manner that traces lineages of African American music in highly personal ways. She was featured in Guelph in 2016, and way back in 1997 on a program featuring ‘Women in Jazz.’

FEATURING 2004 I have been to Guelph so often over the years that my memories blend together a bit.... For me, Guelph has always been an excellent start to the artistic season. It has been a chance to see my friends who live in Guelph and to meet my musician-friends and Ontarian music lovers in a more relaxed environment than Toronto. I fondly remember several of my concerts in Guelph: Nous Perçons les Oreilles at Silence, Évidence at the Guelph Youth Music Centre, Somebody Special, Les Dangereux Zhoms+9, What is a cat en duo with Lee Pui Ming, Nicolas Caloia’s Tilting during a Nuit Blanche event, etc. I’m also thinking about the time that La Fanfare Pourpour spontaneously paraded in the streets, joyfully suspending traffic, even entering local businesses like the Cornerstone and Tony’s Billiards. It warmed my heart to have folks dance to Rainer Wiens’s Follow Follow, as much as dancing myself to Kid Koala or The Ex with Getatchew Mekuriya. Strangely, the Guelph concert that has stuck with me the most is Sainkho Namtchylak with William Parker and Hamid Drake. I think about it often. Art asks us so many good questions, questions that stay with us our whole lives. - Jean Derome Were you there? Share your memories with us to be part of the collection.

The GJF has welcomed Montreal composer & multi-instrumentalist Jean Derome many times and in many contexts for more than two decades. ‘Somebody Special’ with Karen Young, Alexandre Grogg, Normand Guilbeault & Pierre Tanguay, is Jean’s loving exploration of the songbook of the great American composer, Steve Lacy, that he premiered in Guelph in 2018 (our 25th Anniversary Festival) and is documented on this superb 2019 release on Ambiances Mangnétiques (link in bio)

The ICP Orchestra is as fun, as swinging, as playful, and as provocative a band as they come in the field of creative improvised music, and the GJF is proud to have presented them twice in 2000 and in 2008.