Jazz Clubs & Festivals

As you may have seen, a large part of the Jazzfuel site exists to show you how to book more jazz gigs for your project. From figuring out the right shows for you, to learning how to better pitch your project by email and how far in advance you should try to do all of this.

But there’s something else which you’re probably very aware of…

Regardless of how long you’ve been a gigging jazz musician, there are more than likely a huge number of jazz clubs, venues and festivals out there that you haven’t even discovered yet.

Or maybe you’ve heard their names, but you aren’t sure of how they work, what sort of bands they book or when they happen.

When it comes to booking gigs, there’s one thing that tends to be true:

If you don’t know about a club or festival, it’ going to be pretty hard to get a gig there!

Of course, booking requests do appear out of the blue sometimes. But that’s the exception rather than the rule.

So if you’re looking to increase the number of gigs or quality you’re getting, there are two things to take care of:

1) Make sure you have a strategy for booking gigsAre you setting aside regular time to do this? Are you writing great pitching emails and sending them to the decision maker at the club or festival? There’s a whole lot of advice on this topic on the Jazzfuel site, which you can dive into here.

2) Learn more about what jazz clubs & festivals are out there Once you’re confident you have the promotional materials and plan in place to convince a jazz promoter to book you, the goal is to expand your target list so you’re giving yourself more opportunities.

Of course, doing some focused research on the right venues for your music is important (hint: here’s how to get better results in less time) but you can learn a lot just by some concentrated Googling too. And, with that in mind, we’ve put together this growing collection of articles, interviews & guides on the topic…

A list of jazz clubs & jazz festivals

The information on this page will help you discover to more about the great jazz club and festivals around the world.

Some of them cover the happenings in the major ‘media cities’ around the world – such as London, New York & Paris.

But we’re also bringing you up to speed on markets and opportunities that you maybe never considered before.

How about 5 great jazz clubs and 6 of the best festivals in the Eastern European country of Northern Macedonia?!

What about 4 clubs and an outdoor theatre in Houston, Texas, jazz venues in Sacramento or live music in Fort Worth and San Jose?

If there’s a gig out there with a budget to book an ‘international’ artist, you should know about it.

And with these articles we’re doing our bit to speed up that process.

Talking to jazz club & festival bookers

Alongside these ‘guide’ style articles, we’ve also pulled together some of the best club & venue focused Jazzfuel industry interviews from the last few months.

We talk to the people responsible for booking bands at venues including the Bimhuis in Amsterdam and Ronnie Scott’s Jazz Club in London as well as festival promoters including Jazzkaar in Estonia, Brno in the Czech Republic and two in Austria.

Some of these might not be the most well-known names in the world, but they book a whole range of top international jazz each year.

So feel free to dive into some of the articles below and feel free to get in touch to suggest a new city of country for us to cover…

And, as always, if you’d like to be alerted to new articles and guides as soon as they’re published, you can join more than 4,000 musicians around the world on the Jazzfuel newsletter.