whose friendship and love of music goes back to their teen years. While attending jazz festivals around the country they realised that jazz didn't have a proper profile in Liverpool so they spoke to members of the jazz community, jazz educators and also city councillors who all agreed that they should start up an organisation to encourage and raise the profile of liver jazz performance in Liverpool.
They received much encouragement from organisation like the Wigan Jazz Club and its Youth Jazz Orchestra, The Wavendon Garden Jazz Festival, The Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts, The Institute for Popular Music based at the University of Liverpool and the music department at the Liverpool College. At the latter they made friends with Tim Harvey, the director of Myriad Jazz the excellent jazz education department based at the College. In due course Tim joined the team at Liverpooljazz bringing his skills in jazz education as well as being a highly talented jazz pianist, classical musician and organist. Tim is now director of music at the Liverpool College.
During its first four years, Liverpooljazz promoted the successful series of concerts Jazz at the Palm House bringing a wide variety of jazz performance to packed audiences at the famous Sefton Park venue. Also a series of gigs at the Cotton Club in Liverpool's city centre and concerts at the LIPA, the Liverpool Institute For Performing Arts including John Dankworth and Cleo Laine.
While Liverpooljazz doesn't take the credit, somehow jazz activity around Liverpool has certainly risen dramatically since it started with jazz now being a regular feature in bars, clubs, restaurants and hotels around this vibrant city.
Liverpooljazz is proud to be the providers of monthly jazz concerts At the Bluecoat which reopened in March following a major multi-million pound redevelopment. These concerts will run on the first Thursday of each month and will showcase the talents of our city's finest jazz musicians. The concerts will be semi formal in the new performance auditorium with its grand piano.
Local photographer Alan D Smith recently joined the team at Liverpooljazz to contribute his artistic skills. Most of the images on this website and those used in our publicity materials are Alan's handywork. You may often see Alan with his state of the art camera and laptop at our concerts.
Liverpooljazz is always keen to support jazz students and has encouraged and sponsored performance and pieces of music work at local colleges and universities. For example LIVERPOOLJAZZ sponsored the production of a CD album by the Dave Edge Quartet as part of a music student's final year degree course at LIPA in 2005. Also LIVERPOOLJAZZ was among the supporters of Jonathan Murray, one of the talented young trumpeters in the Wigan Youth Jazz Orchestra who went on a study course at the Manhattan College of Music in 2006.
LIVERPOOLJAZZ wants to collaborate with existing jazz venues and those keen to see a weekend festival of jazz here in Liverpool.
With support LIVERPOOLJAZZ will go from strength to strength and we look forward to seeing you at our events. See separate details on this site. Please use this website regularly to hear more and thank you for visiting us at LIVERPOOLJAZZ.
