Next Autumn’s Melbourne International Jazz Festival will branch out to include jazz collaborations with other music genres while also celebrating jazz.
The festival’s new artistic director, Michael Tortoni, said it was as part of a redirection to broaden the festival’s appeal.
He said the festival would feature jazz musicians not only collaborating with their peers, but interacting with other genres.
The festival’s venues will be expanded next year to include Melbourne’s new Recital Hall at Southbank for some performances — and it is possibly the first festival to secure its use.
Other initiatives will include “an interdisciplinary approach” that includes working with the Australian Centre for the Moving Image at Federation Square, which will show jazz films.
Another development will be a relationship with the National Gallery of Victoria, under which “we are going to be exploring the interplay between sound and light and improvisations during the festival”, said the festival’s new general manager, Sophie Brous, jazz singer, composer and Triple R presenter.
Featured artists will give performances in the gallery, interacting with art works. Artists and musicians would give talks on that interplay, Brous said.
Tortoni said there had been many examples of jazz engaging with other music forms such as folk singer Joni Mitchell with jazz bassist Charles Mingus and rock singer Sting’s use of jazz musicians.
Tortoni, the owner of Bennetts Lane Jazz Club, also has rock and jazz backgrounds, playing bass with the reformed 1970s glam rock band Taste and performing in jazz band the Joe Ruberto Trio.
Brous said about 80 per cent of the international acts to be announced next month had not played in Australia and would include major headline names and innovative artists.
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