Traditionally, on the 20th of August, the International Jazz Festival was held in the Hermitage Garden. In 2012, it was held 15 times. Over the years, the festival has been attended by over 80,000 people. And every year the number of people wishing to attend this popular music event is only growing.
In 1998, in the very center of Moscow, in the Hermitage garden, the first jazz festival was held. It was conceived as an urban music event, but over the following years the festival turned into a large open-air jazz forum. It became popular not only in our country, but also abroad, and twice the Moscow Association of Jazz Journalists recognized it as the best event of the year.
Over the years, the most famous Russian jazz musicians have taken part in the Jazz in the Hermitage Garden Festival: Alexei Kozlov, Anatoly Kroll, Igor Butman, Georgy Garanyan, Igor Bril and others. Many foreign stars performed at the music forum: Gary Bartz, Lou Tabakin, Randy Brecker, Jeremy Pelt and others.
The organizers of the festival - the directorate of the Hermitage City Garden, JAZZ FEST with the support of the Ministry of Culture of the Russian Federation and the Moscow Department of Culture - brought together 12 Russian and foreign ensembles from the USA, Israel, Austria and Poland for the anniversary of the jazz forum in 2012. Among them are the Big Jazz Orchestra conducted by P. Vostokov, saxophonist Anna Koroleva, American pianist George Colligan, trumpet quartet Itamar Borokhov from Israel and others.
The festival traditionally took place on the twentieth of August, falling on weekends, and lasted 3 days. Anyone could get to the jazz festival. Tickets were sold at the box office of the Hermitage Garden immediately before the concerts. The performances of the musicians began at 17-00.
Traditionally, within the framework of the Jazz in the Hermitage Garden festival, night jam sessions were held at the popular Moscow club “Union of Composers”. They became a kind of continuation of the evening performances in the open air. In the nightclub, musicians who had never been personally acquainted with each other and who had not played together improvised, delighting the audience with jazz dialogues. Tickets to the "Union of Composers" club could be ordered by phone or through ticket delivery companies.
