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If you are a jazz music lover, chances are that you go to a festival every year. What you probably didn’t know is that there are jazz festivals all over the world. If you like to travel, expand your jazz tastes and go to these international jazz festivals.

Akbank Jazz Festival, Istanbul, Turkey
October 17-October 27

The Akbank Jazz Festival is one of a diverse mixture of sounds from the country as well as all around the world. Last year’s festival was dedicated to Arif Mardin. One artist that has performed there is Kurt Elling. Kurt Elling is very popular in jazz music today. In his ten year career, all six of his albums were nominated for Grammy awards. He has toured all around the world in places including Israel, Japan and Australia. In 2003, he was made Vice Chair on NARAS.(National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences) He has an album out this year.

Barbados Jazz Festival, Barbados
January 8-January 14

Some of the artists that will be performing here are Ruben Studdard, Anita Baker, Macy Gray and Robert Glasper. This is not a free Jazz music festival. Prices to hear performances range from $30 to $100, depending on the artist. If you want to attend this jazz music festival, you cannot order tickets internationally. You have to actually be in Barbados and provide the address where you’ll be staying in Barbados and the tickets will be delivered to that address.

Brecon Jazz Festival, United Kingdom
August 11-August 13

Brecon Jazz has been around for twenty-four years. The best jazz music is performed at the brilliant Brecon Beacons National Park. It is located in Wales. The company, Brecon International Festival of Jazz Ltd., a charity organization, is backing the festival has an education and outreach program in Wales and the South-West of England, during the year.
This year, the Brecon Jazz Festival had an Artist-in Residence, Joe Lovano. Joe Lovano is one of the world’s best tenor saxophone players and has been around since the ’70′s. He has performed in Woody Herman’s orchestra and Mel Lewis’s orchestra. The music he then went on to create broke boundaries collaborating with artists such as John Scofield, Hank Jones and Bill Frisell. He led the BBC Big Band at Brecon, taught a masters class to young welsh Jazz musicians. This year Brecon also featured “Women in Jazz”. A couple of the artists were: Jessica Williams from the U.S. and Hiromi from Japan.

Copenhagan Jazz Festival, Denmark
July 6- July 15

In case you didn’t know, the Danish are really into jazz. New artists as well as the old have been performing in the city. The concerts in the day are perfomed near the canals and historic homes. Some prefer to play small, crowded clubs. Every live performance is electrifying and memorable. Artists that have performed here are George Clinton and the P-Funk Allstars, McCoy Tyner Trio, Scandinavian Brasillian-Big Band,Mavis Staples W. Band, The Zawinul Syndicate and Maceo Parker. Jazz music is not something that is only appreciated in the states, but everywhere around the world. It is important to experience jazz music in other places so that the magic of jazz will ever be broadened, shared and continued to be translated for years to come.

The Jazz music sensation began to rub off on other parts of the world which encourages the experimentation of melding their familiar sounds with the essence of Jazz. In Europe’s country in the Region of France came the Quintette Du Hot Club de France who was responsible for the making of the early “Gypsy Jazz”.

The Belgian guitarist Django Reinhardt created gypsy jazz by mixing the style of French Musette which was used in the dance halls, eastern European Folk known as Jazz Manouche, and American swing of the 1930′s. The sound was developed by instruments from the string family which are a steel string guitar, violin, and an upright bass. The atmosphere of the Jazz music is seductive with sudden unpredictable twists, and accelerating rhythms. The French artist Bireli Lagrene plays this unique music with old elements of the past.

Another style of Jazz music that allowed the musicians to express themselves freely was the invention of Avant-garde or free Jazz music. Both of these styles stemmed from the Bebop era, yet produced a relaxed form of harmonic and rhythmic music in the 1940′s and 1950′s. The musicians John Coltrane, Dewey Redman, Charles Mingus, Sun Ra, Sam Rivers, Ornette Coleman and many more were the creators of the free Jazz music. Between the 1960′s and 1970′s the Latin musicians created the Afro-Cuban and Brazilian Jazz Music styles after Bebop musicians Dizzy Gillespie and Billy Taylor cultivated it.

Gillespie and Taylor was influenced by the music of Cuban and Puerto Rican musicians Chico O’farrill, Tito Puente, Chano Pozo, Xavier Cugat, Mario Bauza and Arturo Sandoval. Jazz music expressed in a Latin interpretation was termed Bossa Nova with origins in Samba music which is a mixture of Jazz, classical and pop music from the 20th century. Bossa is a moderate sound of music with Classical harmonic structure from Europe, Samba polyrhythm’s from Brazil and cool music. The tempo of such a work is about 120 beats per minute. The instruments used in this particular sound is nylon stringed guitar, piano, high hat tap of eighths, tapping on the rim of the drum like Sade’s “Sweetest Taboo”, and a vocalist. The sound produced is a new relaxing sound where the acoustic sound of the guitar can lull one to sleep with it’s easy melodic line.

Joao Gilberto and Antonio Carlos Jobim became popular in the sixties with this style of music. The influence of Jazz music returned to the place of its origins in the religious music known as Urban Contemporary Gospel from the spirituals music. Much of spiritual music sung by southern slaves in the past has a haunting dark and mournful sound during the 1800 and 1900′s. The churches know as the sanctified or holy churches took a more happier approach by encouraging member to sing speak their personal testimonies as they celebrated with song and dance.

The sanctified artist Arizona Dranes who was a traveling pastor made recordings that would fit in many musical categories such as blues, and boogie-woogie with the use of Jazz instruments. At the time the Jazz instruments used with religious themed music were percussion and brass instruments.