Red Sea Jazz Festival

The Red Sea Jazz Festival is the major Jazz festival in the Middle East, held annually in Eilat, Israel and draws such major Jazz acts as Chick Corea, Bill Evans, Mike Stern, Omar Sosa, Carla Bley, Diana Krall, Incognito, Dianne Reeves, Hiromi Uehara and many others. It is normally held on the last week of August, between Monday and Thursday.

Background

The Red Sea Jazz Festival was first held in 1987 in it's current form: A four-day long festival with 9-10 concerts per evening, 6 clinics with guest artists and nightly jam sessions. All performances are being held outdoors at the Eilat port and the clinics take place at a nearby hotel.The festival presents performances by Jazz greats from around the globe, as well as promoting young Jazz artists and original compositions, ranging on a very broad musical spectrum. The festival also brings together artists to create special productions, exclusively to the festival. Some of these special productions in the past included Randy Brecker & Mark Egan, The Jazz Beatles, Miroslav Vitous & John Abercrombie, Charlie Haden & John Scofield and many more.

The festival draws an average of 2,500 people per concert and an average of 70,000 people per festival and it is a non-profit organization, promoted by the Municipality of the Eilat and supported by the Government Ministries of Culture & Tourism, The Eilat Hotel Association, plus various business sponsors.

In 2008, famous Israeli Jazz bassist Avishai Cohen took over the artistic direction of the festival, replacing Dan Gottfried who has been the artistic director of the festival since it's beginning. [http://www.allyourjazz.com/2008/07/avishai-cohen-named-artistic-director-for-red-sea-jazz-festival/]

Notable Artists

2006

#Mory Kante
#Gonzalo Rubalcaba Trio
#Suthukazi Arosi
#Latin Groove Orquestra
#The Mingus Dynasty
#Rick Margitza
#Franck Amsalem

2007

#Tomasz Stanko
#Chris Potter
#Incognito
#Sara Lazarus
#Steps Ahead
#Conrad Herwig
#Joey DeFrancesco

2008

#Randy Brecker
#Bill Evans
#Kurt Elling
#Carla Bley
#Mike Stern
#Richard Bona
#Ben Riley
#Oregon
#Terry Lyne Carrington
#John Fedchock
#Omar Sosa
#Zbigniew Namyslowski
#Avishai Cohen

External links

* [http://www.redseajazzeilat.com/index2.php?id=1&lang=ENG Official site]

Notes