The Detroit International Jazz Festival (also known as the Detroit Jazz Festival) is a jazz music festival held each year over Labor Day Weekend at Hart Plaza and Campus Martius Park in Detroit, Michigan, U.S.. It is the largest free jazz festival in North America. Until 2000, it was known as the Detroit-Montreux Jazz Festival. The festival again changed names in 2005, becoming the Detroit International Jazz Festival after Ford Motor Company removed its sponsorship. In January 2006, Gretchen Valade, Chairman of Mack Avenue Records founded the Detroit International Jazz Festival Foundation, which took over production and management of the festival.
Notable past performers have included Dave Brubeck, Mulgrew Miller, The Manhattan Transfer, Paquito d'Rivera, Dave Holland, Regina Carter, Take 6, and Tower of Power. 2012 performers include Wynton Marsalis, Chick Corea, and Joe Lovano.
Famous quotes containing the words jazz and/or festival:
“The basic difference between classical music and jazz is that in the former the music is always greater than its performance—Beethoven’s Violin Concerto, for instance, is always greater than its performance—whereas the way jazz is performed is always more important than what is being performed.”
—André Previn (b. 1929)
“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)