May 28, 2012 – The 33rd edition of the Montréal International Jazz Festival will heat up the Quartier des spectacles this coming June 28 to July 7. The complete program of this highly-anticipated event will not be announced until the spring, but in their signature suspense-building fashion, the management has leaked that the legendary Liza Minelli will be on the bill, as well as bass-player Stanley Clark, singers Lila Downs and Melody Gardot, accordion-player Richard Galliano and the group Spectrum Road, just to name a few headliners. If this is any indication, the musical forecast will be hot for this 2012 festival!
Each summer, this granddaddy of all musical gatherings, infuses our streets and concert halls with the spectacular showmanship and stellar notes we’ve all come to expect. Music mavens love the fest for its namesake genre as well as its line-up of other sounds and beats and influences – like blues, Brazilian, Cuban, African, reggae, contemporary and electronic – not to mention a whopping line-up of 3,000 artists hailing from 30 different countries around the world.
A place for musical genres – and people – to meet, this festival draws over 2.5 million visitors who come en masse to enjoy the shows – choosing from over 800, with two-thirds completely free – on some fifteen indoor and a dozen or so outdoor stages! And if this scene wasn’t festive enough, some 600 activities and additional entertainment make for one incredible summer happening, even for the kids who have a musical playground at their disposal.
It's a traffic-stopper in every sense of the word, filled with free-range festivalgoers happily sating themselves on a menu of music as they roam from one outdoor stage to the next. Yes, Montréal devotes its downtown streets entirely to pedestrians for the occasion, and everybody loves all the room to dance!
Cafés, bistros, and art galleries jazz up this urban musical circuit. For twelve days straight, the city trades car horns for music concerts by transforming into one, big, safe pedestrian zone filled with happy festival-goers as they stroll from one amazing show to the next. In Montréal, summer sounds a lot like jazz…
