Manchester Jazz Festival’s 25th anniversary is going digital!
mjf2020: Jazz Unlocked will stream across the festival’s social channels from May 21 – 24, produced in partnership with Jazz North.
Join us for four days of unseen footage, exclusive artist interviews, a look back over 25 years of new music and of course some live gigs.
To help us stage some socially distanced live performances by festival artists, we’re also partnering with United We Stream, the newly launched GMCA streaming website set up to support the region’s night time economy and Greater Manchester’s Mayor’s Charity Nordoff Robbins music therapy, who’ll stream the festival across their channels on Thursday 21 and Sunday 24 May.
Manchester’s longest running music festival had been due to mark their first quarter century this May but was forced to halt its physical gigs as the COVID-19 pandemic took hold.
All artists originally contracted to play mjf2020 were paid in full and are now working on performances for audiences to enjoy in their own homes. The mjf2020: Jazz Unlocked line up will be announced in mid-May.
mjf Artistic Director Steve Mead said: “A huge amount of work had gone into making mjf2020 an unforgettable 25th anniversary for the festival. After the initial disappointment of cancelling our physical gigs across the city, we dusted ourselves off and set about creating four days of equally impressive content to share across our digital channels instead."
“Long-time supporters of mjf will remember we were forced to cancel our very first festival back in 1996 on the day when the first Manchester bomb rocked the city, so it’s a strange book end to our first quarter century that we were force to rethink this year, our 25th anniversary. We couldn’t be stopped in 1996 and we won’t be stopped now. We’re delighted to team up with Jazz North and United We Stream to bring you an all new, all digital and very much unforgettable festival, mjf2020: Jazz Unlocked.”
Jazz North, a strategic development agency building new models for jazz delivery across the north of England, will be producing partners of this year’s digital festival.
Jazz North Executive Director Lesley Jackson said: “mjf2020: Jazz Unlocked illustrates the resilience and adaptability of this amazing sector, so we are thrilled to be working with mjf to help move this prestigious festival online.”
Follow us on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter to stay up to date with all the mjf2020: Jazz Unlocked news.
You can catch United We Stream on their website, Twitter and Facebook.
