Triumph for Liverpool International Jazz Festival 2024

This year’s annual Liverpool International Jazz Festival was a triumph. An intensive four-day jazz fest from 22-24 February 2024 showcased local emerging talent, steadfast stalwarts of the Liverpool music scene and some big hitters for good measure.

Now in its 11th year, the team strategically planned the event to pull it off seamlessly. The audience could take as much or as little of it as they wished from the bands on offer with some of it being free and other parts being ticketed at reasonable prices.

Liverpool Hope University have invested significantly in the campus and it shows from amazing acoustic theatre spaces to Cafe 1846 which make a mean iced oat milk latte half the price of one from an average high street chain.

The mightily impressive sax/piano duo Tommy Smith and Gwilym Simcock kicked things off on Thursday night — with a sell-out show that was received with rapturous applause.

An impressive free big band tribute to Carla Bley followed that on the Friday afternoon and The David Helbock Austrian Syndicate on the Friday evening — two spectacular showcases and a sign of things to come.

A so-called Mutant Jazz After Party on Friday night in a bar in town, Metrocola, was held in collaboration with the not-for-profit Parr Street Jazz, set up and run by musicians for musicians and music lovers.

It featured four up and coming young bands with tons of potential, bands that crossed the jazz spectrum.

Another free mini festival within a festival took place on Saturday afternoon. It showcased no less than six local experimental bands with some quite astonishing improvisational ‘out there’ jazz.

There were also a lot of jazz fringe events happening across the city on the same weekend in various pubs.

The grand finale on Sunday night climaxed with Denys Baptiste doing his re-interpretation of John Coltrane.