The Buenos Aires Jazz Festival is a music festival first organized in its current form by the city government of Buenos Aires in 2002. The festival takes place in multiple venues and, in recent years, has attracted around 36,000 spectators.

Overview

The Buenos Aires Jazz Festival was inspired, in part, by the after-dinner "café concerts" popular in large Argentine cities during the 1960s and '70s. This was followed by Carlos Inzillo

Carlos Inzillo

Carlos Inzillo is a jazz musician, producer and historian from Argentina.-Life and work:Inzillo was born in Buenos Aires in 1944. He enrolled at the , earning a degree in journalism, and later, a doctorate in social psychology...

's Jazzología, which he first organized in September 1984 and remains the oldest continuously-running jazz festival in Argentina.

Jazz festivals had been organized intermittently in Buenos Aires and a number of other Argentine cities, such as Rosario

Rosario

Rosario is the largest city in the province of Santa Fe, Argentina. It is located northwest of Buenos Aires, on the western shore of the Paraná River and has 1,159,004 residents as of the ....

, La Plata

La Plata

La Plata is the capital city of the Province of Buenos Aires, Argentina, and of La Plata partido. According to the , the city proper has a population of 574,369 and its metropolitan area has 694,253 inhabitants....

 and Avellaneda

Avellaneda

Avellaneda is a port city in the province of Buenos Aires, Argentina, and the seat of the Avellaneda Partido, whose population was 328,980 as per the ....

, during the 1990s. Defying conventional wisdom during the depths of a severe economic crisis, the city of Buenos Aires announced a new, upocoming Buenos Aires Jazz Festival in July 2002. This first event was held on August 6-20 and was free to the public. Featuring mostly local artists, notably Pablo Ziegler

Pablo Ziegler

Pablo Ziegler is an Argentine composer based in Buenos Aires and New York City. He is currently the leading exponent of nuevo tango, thanks to the skills and reputation he gathered while working extensively as Ástor Piazzolla's regular pianist from 1978 until the maestro's retirement for health...

 and Dino Saluzzi

Dino Saluzzi

Timoteo "Dino" Saluzzi is an Argentine musician.The son of popular carpero composer and instrumentalist Cayetano Saluzzi, Dino played the bandoneón since his childhood...

, it was held in three locations: Thelonious, Notorious, and The Casual Bar.

The event's success led to a second festival on April 10-16, 2003, with the addition of the important San Martín Cultural Centre

Centro Cultural General San Martín

The General San Martín Cultural Centre is a cultural centre located in Buenos Aires, Argentina near the major thoroughfare Corrientes Avenue.It is run by the city government, and hosts diverse cultural and artistic events...

 as a venue and with the introduction of paid ticket admission. U.S. jazz vocalist Jane Blackstone was among the 2003 festival's notable international guests. Since then, the event has attracted other internationally renowned jazz artists, among them Kenny Barron

Kenny Barron

Kenny Barron , is an American jazz pianist. He is the younger brother of tenor saxophonist Bill Barron, and known for his lyrical, adaptive style.-Biography:...

, Anthony Braxton

Anthony Braxton

Anthony Braxton is an American composer, saxophonist, clarinettist, flautist, pianist, and philosopher. Braxton has released well over 100 albums since the 1960s...

, Michael Brecker

Michael Brecker

Michael Leonard Brecker was an American jazz saxophonist and composer. Acknowledged as "a quiet, gentle musician widely regarded as the most influential tenor saxophonist since John Coltrane," he has been awarded 15 Grammy Awards as both performer and composer and was inducted into Down Beat Jazz...

, Dee Dee Bridgewater

Dee Dee Bridgewater

Dee Dee Bridgewater is an American Jazz singer. She is a three-time Grammy Award winning singer-songwriter, as well as a Tony Award - winning stage actress and host of National Public Radio's syndicated radio show JazzSet with Dee Dee Bridgewater...

, Ron Carter

Ron Carter

Ron Carter is an American jazz double-bassist. His appearances on over 2,500 albums make him one of the most-recorded bassists in jazz history, along with Milt Hinton, Ray Brown and Leroy Vinnegar. Carter is also an acclaimed cellist who has recorded numerous times on that...

, Herbie Hancock

Herbie Hancock

Herbert Jeffrey "Herbie" Hancock is an American pianist, bandleader and composer. As part of Miles Davis's "second great quintet," Hancock helped to redefine the role of a jazz rhythm section and was one of the primary architects of the "post-bop" sound...

, Fred Hersch

Fred Hersch

Fred Hersch is a contemporary American jazz pianist who has become a consistent and highly demanded performer on the international jazz scene....

, Freddie Hubbard

Freddie Hubbard

Frederick Dewayne "Freddie" Hubbard was an American jazz trumpeter. He was known primarily for playing in the bebop, hard bop and post bop styles from the early 1960s and on...

, Rosa Passos

Rosa Passos

Rosa Passos is a Brazilian singer and guitarist born in Bahia.Passos began playing piano at age thirteen, but after listening to Dorival Caymmi and João Gilberto she abandoned the instrument to become a singer. In the late 1960s, Passos began appearing on television and at music festivals...

, Chucho Valdés

Chucho Valdés

Chucho Valdés is a Cuban pianist, bandleader, composer and arranger. In 1972 he founded the group Irakere, one of Cuba's best-known Latin jazz bands. Together with pianist Gonzalo Rubalcaba, Valdés is revered as one of Cuba's greatest jazz pianists...

, and Randy Weston

Randy Weston

Randy Weston , is an American jazz pianist and composer, of Jamaican parentage.-Biography:Weston studied classical piano as a child. After serving in the U.S. Army during World War II, he ran a restaurant that was frequented by many of the leading bebop musicians...

. Local pianist Adrián Iaies

Adrián Iaies

Adrián Iaies is an Argentine pianist and composer who has been nominated for the Latin Grammy awards three times. His main style is Jazz but he combines that with soul, tango, and other styles....

has been the festival's artistic director since 2007.