As part of Must Love Festivals, earlier this summer I crossed the mighty Atlantic to finally visit Montreal and checkout what is THE world’s biggest and most successful Jazz festival: the Montreal International Jazz Festival or The Festival International de Jazz de Montréal.
The Montreal Jazz Fest holds the 2004 Guinness World Record as the world’s largest jazz festival. Every year it features roughly 3,000 artists from 30-odd countries, more than 650 concerts (including 450 free outdoor performances), and welcomes close to 2.5 million visitors.The festival takes place over the first 10 days in July at 10 free outdoor stages and 10 indoor concert halls.
The summers are short here in Montreal. Winters are long. Long and very harsh. The last one was pretty bad. So when the sun shines, this city doesn’t waste a moment. It’s one big party after another.
The weekend I visited, the last weekend of the festival is the high watermark of the Montreal summer.
Local, Suzanne Labrecque from Tourism Quebec summed up nicely the emotional ties to the festival
‘The Montreal Jazz festival is the highlight of my summer…’, she paused and then gazed wistfully for a few moments into the wide expanse of Place des Festivals (a square the city has dedicated to hosting festivals ) before finishing with a sigh
‘…everything goes downhill after this final weekend.’
So like Montrealers, I had to make it count. Every moment.
Here’s a little video that is a sum of my magical Montreal moments.
I am a novice to shooting video but I hope this gives you some feel, idea of what the festival and city is like at this time of the year. Thanks for watching!
Disclaimer
I attended this festival as part of an annual storytelling project I developed about cool, quirky festivals around the world called Must Love Festivals. If you are curious to know more interesting festivals like this, please visit the website MustLoveFestivals.com I also would like to take the opportunity to thanks my blogger buddy Chris Williams from Real Man Travels : pleasure hanging out with you.
Nim and everyone at Destination Canada, Suzanne and the team at Tourism Quebec, Hugo at Tourisme Montreal, Andree and the good folk at Montreal Jazz Festival plus last but not least Jill and David at Expedia UK, our lead partner for Must Love Festivals.
