Musicians to perform online during the Edmonton International Jazz Festival

Jazz Fest will go on Organizers have brought back the Edmonton International Jazz Festival after it was all but cancelled. Graham Neil explains.

Edmonton — The Edmonton international Jazz Festival is doing some improvising this year. They are presenting their festival online starting this Friday. The festival’s artistic director, Kent Sangster, says the original plan was to cancel the festival due to the COVID-19 pandemic but they had a “mountain” of requests to do something online.

“I look at this as a preview, a little preview of what’s coming next year.”

Sangster says most of the acts who were scheduled for this year have not only agreed to come back in 2021, but also take part in the online version of the festival. The performers, which include local, national, and international acts will not only play music, they also take part in interviews.

“As much as streaming is an exciting thing, after a performance, after a 20 or 30 minute performance, that‘s a long time to sit in front of a computer screen without some kind of interactive element.”

Sangster will conduct most of the interviews with the goal of music fans to get to know the musicians on both a personal and a creative level.

“It is really interesting to ask some outside of the box questions but also how they’re doing, how they’re coping with this situation and what their artistic process is,” he says.

The opening weekend will feature three days of streaming entertainment with more free performances and interviews happening online every weekend until July 31st.

All of the performances and interviews are free of charge …with people being asked to donate to charities instead.

"This is definitely and all free event. Everybody can log in. All musicians are paid by the festival we’re in good financial shape that way."

The Edmonton International Jazz Festival’s kicks off virtually this Friday. A full line up of performances is available online.