The Charlie Jazz Festival is an annual music festival held every summer in Vitrolles

Vitrolles, Bouches-du-Rhône

Vitrolles is a commune in the Bouches-du-Rhône département in the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur region in southern France. It is the largest suburb of the city of Aix-en-Provence and is adjacent to its southwest side.-Population:-Administration:...

, Provence

Provence

Provence ; Provençal: Provença in classical norm or Prouvènço in Mistralian norm) is a region of south eastern France on the Mediterranean adjacent to Italy. It is part of the administrative région of Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur...

, France. It was established in 1998 by Charlie Free, a not-for-profit jazz organization which runs jazz sessions every two weeks at Le Moulin à Jazz, a famous jazz club in France.

The festival is hosted at Le Domaine de Fontblanche, a public garden with centenaries planes

Platanus

Platanus is a small genus of trees native to the Northern Hemisphere. They are the sole living members of the family Platanaceae....

, the first weekend of July.

The two stages in the park feature concerts by international artists, but a large part of the program aims to discover high talented young players from Europe and France.

Since its beginning, the festival hosted world renowned artists and groups such as Didier Levallet

Didier Levallet

Didier Levallet is a French jazz double bassist, composer, arranger and leader.A self-taught bassist, Levallet made his professional debut in Paris in 1969, working with such artists as Ted Curson, Johnny Griffin, Kenny Clarke, Mal Waldron, Hank Mobley, Archie Shepp, Tony Oxley, Steve Lacy, Harry...

, Daniel Humair

Daniel Humair

Daniel Humair is a drummer, jazz composer and painter.He is widely renowned and became Chevalier des Arts et Lettres in 1986.He has played with many jazz performers notably Martial Solal, Gerry Mulligan and Eric Dolphy....

, Chris Potter

Chris Potter (jazz saxophonist)

Chris Potter is an American jazz saxophonist, composer, and multi-instrumentalist.-Biography:Born in Chicago, Illinois, Potter spent most of his childhood in Columbia, South Carolina where his mother taught psychology at the University of South Carolina...

, Christian Escoudé

Christian Escoudé

Christian Escoudé is a jazz guitarist from France. He grew up in Angoulême and is of Romani people descent on his father's side. His father was a guitarist too and influenced by Django Reinhardt. Christian became a musician at 15 and starting in 1972 he worked in a trio with Aldo Romano. By the...

, Aldo Romano

Aldo Romano

Aldo Romano is a jazz drummer. He also started a rock group in 1971.-Biography:He moved to France as a child and by the 1950s he was playing guitar and drums professionally in Paris, but his career gained notice when he started working with Don Cherry in 1963. He recorded with Steve Lacy and...

, Paolo Fresu

Paolo Fresu

Paolo Fresu is a trumpet and flugelhorn jazz player, as well as an arranger of music, and music composer.-Career:Fresu was born in Berchidda, Sardinia. He picked up the trumpet at the age of 11, and played in the band Bernardo de Muro in his home town Berchidda...

, Bojan Z, Archie Shepp

Archie Shepp

Archie Shepp is a prominent African-American jazz saxophonist. Shepp is best known for his passionately Afrocentric music of the late 1960s, which focused on highlighting the injustices faced by the African-Americans, as well as for his work with the New York Contemporary Five, Horace Parlan, and...

, Elisabeth Kontomanou, Raphaël Imbert, David Linx

David Linx

David Linx is a Belgian jazz singer, composer and songwriter.-As guest:*Diederik Wissels*Trio Bravo*Viktor Lazlo*Maurane*La Grande Formation*Aka Moon- Notes :...

, Diederik Wissels

Diederik Wissels

The Dutch-born award-winning jazz pianist Diederik Wissels was born in Rotterdam in December 1960. In 1968, he moved to Brussels, Belgium and later attended Boston's Berklee College of Music. In his early career, he played with Chet Baker, Joe Henderson and Toots Thielemans, amongst others...

, Michel Portal

Michel Portal

Michel Portal is a composer, saxophonist, and clarinetist.Portal studied clarinet at the Conservatoire de Paris...

, Louis Sclavis

Louis Sclavis

Louis Sclavis is a French jazz musician. He performs on clarinet, bass clarinet, and soprano saxophone in a variety of contexts, including jazz and free jazz...

, The Art Ensemble of Chicago

Art Ensemble of Chicago

The Art Ensemble of Chicago is an avant-garde jazz ensemble that grew out of Chicago's AACM in the late 1960s. The group continues to tour and record through 2006, despite the deaths of two of the founding members....

, Richard Galliano

Richard Galliano

Richard Galliano is a French accordionist.-Biography:He was drawn to music at an early age, starting with the accordion at 4, influenced by his father Lucien, an accordionist originally from Italy, living in Nice.After a long and intense period of study Richard Galliano (born December 12, 1950,...

, The Vienna Art Orchestra

Vienna Art Orchestra

The Vienna Art Orchestra was a European jazz group based in Vienna, Austria. Organized at different times as either a big band or as a smaller combo, it was regarded as one of the leading European jazz ensembles and was an official cultural ambassador of the Republic of Austria.-History:Founded in...

, Carla Bley

Carla Bley

Carla Bley, née Borg, is an American jazz composer, pianist, organist and band leader. An important figure in the Free Jazz movement of the 1960s, she is perhaps best known for her jazz opera Escalator Over The Hill , as well as a book of compositions that have been performed by many other...

, Henri Texier

Henri Texier

Henri Texier, born , is a French jazz double bassist born in Paris.He is perhaps best-known for his 1960s work with Don Cherry and for his 1980s band the "Transatlantik Quartet", which featured Joe Lovano, Steve Swallow and Aldo Romano...

, and dozens of other top names in jazz music.

External links

• Official web site