The Charlie Jazz Festival is an annual music festival held every summer in Vitrolles, Provence, France. It was established in 1998 by Charlie Free, a not-for-profit jazz organization which runs jazz sessions every two weeks at Le Moulin à Jazz, a famous jazz club in France.
The festival is hosted at Le Domaine de Fontblanche, a public garden with centenaries planes, the first weekend of July.
The two stages in the park feature concerts by international artists, but a large part of the program aims to discover high talented young players from Europe and France.
Since its beginning, the festival hosted world renowned artists and groups such as Didier Levallet, Daniel Humair, Chris Potter, Christian Escoudé, Aldo Romano, Paolo Fresu, Bojan Z, Archie Shepp, Elisabeth Kontomanou, Raphaël Imbert, David Linx, Diederik Wissels, Michel Portal, Louis Sclavis, The Art Ensemble of Chicago, Richard Galliano, The Vienna Art Orchestra, Carla Bley, Henri Texier, and dozens of other top names in jazz music.
Famous quotes containing the words jazz and/or festival:
“There’s more bad music in jazz than any other form. Maybe that’s because the audience doesn’t really know what’s happening.”
—Pat Metheny (b. 1954)
“Don’t you know there are 200 temperance women in this county who control 200 votes. Why does a woman work for temperance? Because she’s tired of liftin’ that besotted mate of hers off the floor every Saturday night and puttin’ him on the sofa so he won’t catch cold. Tonight we’re for temperance. Help yourself to them cloves and chew them, chew them hard. We’re goin’ to that festival tonight smelling like a hot mince pie.”
—Laurence Stallings (1894–1968)