The International Jazz Festival in Montreal (Festival International de Jazz de Montréal) — is a popular world jazz festival that has been held annually for 40 years.
This famous festival is an important attraction in Montreal —, the oldest of Canadian cities. Located on the banks of the St. Lawrence River, the perfectly restored old part of the city, which has retained the French flavor of the 17th-19th centuries, with many restaurants and open cafes, has been turning into a single concert venue for several summer days every year for more than thirty years, where performances of the most famous in the world jazz bands attract many thousands of spectators and tourists.
The Jazz Festival has long become a kind of locomotive in the economic development of Montreal: thanks to it, millions of dollars are poured into the city treasury every year. More than 2,000 musicians from 20 countries take part in the festival’s concerts, and the number of amateurs covered by its program who agree to listen to music right on the streets even in the rain has exceeded 2 million people in recent years. Such a dizzying success of the Montreal festival was hardly dreamed of by two young Canadian music lovers who were at the origins of this event.
Andre Menard and Alain Simard arranged it simply out of boredom — were looking for something to do in the summer. There was no one who would then approve of their initiative or simply support them. They tried to warn their friends against failure, convincing them that a jazz festival in Canada was unlikely to become popular. Neither friends nor the government believed in the idea. When Alain Simard asked the federal authorities for financial assistance to organize the first festival, convincing officials that thousands of music lovers would gather for the jazz festival, they openly laughed at him.
The very first Montreal festival, which lasted only two days, had only 12 thousand spectators. «We were simply eaten by mosquitoes then, but the audience did not leave, and we played», — jazz musician Rey Daus recalled the first festival.
Now the jazz festival in Montreal is considered one of the largest in the world among music festivals of all genres. It lasts approximately 10 days, and more than 300 concerts take place at its main 20 largest venues during this time. Hundreds of thousands of jazz fans from the United States, Europe and Japan gather for the festival shows, making the Montreal festival the most visited in the world.
Over the three decades of its existence, the Montreal festival has turned from just a musical event into a social phenomenon. It became a launching pad for many musicians: it was in Montreal that the public discovered names such as Wynton Marsalis, Colin James...
What distinguishes Montreal from other similar festivals, according to critics, is that, being so grandiose, on the one hand, it continues to remain very intimate, almost intimate, on the other. Concerts can take place not only in huge open areas, but also in cozy cafes and bars, almost in a family atmosphere. Another distinctive feature of the festival was the novelty and experiments of —, every time here you can hear music that is not performed too often in North America.
This festival is also a unique combination consisting of magnificent music, beauty and identity of Montreal itself with its restaurants and museums. On festival days, you can wander around the city from morning to night, moving from one site to another, communicate with people who are always friendly and reserved even in a large crowd, and get great pleasure from it.