Jazz is hitting a high note in the month of June in Lethbridge as the Albertan city wraps up its first Jazz festival under a newly formed society. The Lethbridge Jazz Society incorporated new talent this year as well as elements from the jazz programs at local schools. The festival was held from June 16 to June 19 at various theatres throughout the city and artists from diverse backgrounds.
The mandate for the festival was to continue to allow mainstream opportunities for local artists to play, as well as foster new and emerging talents from surrounding jazz schools. A fair bit of networking and communication among the local artists and schools was required to make the expanding freestyle nature of the event in Lethbridge the success that it was.
The festival is being promoted all through Lethbridge, through advertising campaigns that featured banner printing and signage of venues and acts involved, to printed paraphernalia that may have been a part of the jazz programs at the local schools.
Venues to be used include more than just the usual suspects such as the Southern Alberta Art Gallery, where the event will kick off at 8pm on June 16, but also venues like the Sterndale Bennett Theatre, the Slice, the Mocha Cabana, Tongue N Groove and Ric's Grill so there is a place to suit everyone.
This is the first Lethbridge Jazz Festival so organisers are hoping the public will really get behind the event, thus ensuring the successful future of this event.
