Flying start for jazz festival ticket sales

Leyburn Jazz Festival returns in October for its fourth annual event, and organisers have been delighted to see ticket sales getting off to a great start.

With performances at St Matthews Church and Tennants Garden Rooms, the festival brings some of the UK’s best jazz talent to the town from October 17 to 20.

Featuring the likes of jazz guitar great Jim Mullen, former Parliamentary Jazz Vocalist of the Year Zoe Gilby, the uptempo foot-stomping New Orleans sounds of Alligator Gumbo and the Worth Valley Hot 7, this year’s headliners are Hejira, a seven-piece band dedicated to the jazz-influenced albums of Joni Mitchell from the late 1970s.

Organised once again by the community music and arts charity BlueBoxt Creative and Performing Arts, with a small team of local volunteers, tickets went on sale in March and business has been brisk, to the delight of BlueBoxt coordinator Colin Bailey.

“This year’s line-up is really strong with a great mix of jazz to suit all tastes," he said. "Hejira also have great crossover appeal with folk and rock music fans and are absolutely not to be missed. We’ve been really pleased to see so much interest in the festival with six months still to go.

"Full festival tickets are particularly popular and we know many of those tickets are being bought by those that have attended in previous years and are coming back for more. That’s a great boost to local hospitality and tourism as well as being great for our festival.”

Claire Cameron from the organising team is in the midst of preparing the festival brochure, which will be distributed across the Dales in coming weeks. "We’re keen to find sponsors and advertisers to feature in the brochure," she said. "We distribute about 5,000 brochures to all kinds of outlets across the region and we always have to restock as they are popular with visitors and locals alike. An ad in the brochure is a very cost-effective way of advertising for small businesses, particularly as the brochures are out and about all through the summer and into late Autumn.”

Full details of the lineup, festival tickets and brochure advertising opportunities can all be found at the Leyburn Jazz Festival website, www.leyburnjazz.org.