Jazzamanca 2020: Inside Salamanca Arts Centre’s new jazz festival

A new festival in Hobart will feature some of Australia’s finest jazz performers, including Ethiopian jazz band Black Jesus Experience, seven piece group Wanderlust and Melbourne’s Michelle Nicolle Quartet.

Black Jesus Experience are performing at Jazzamanca. Picture: BRAM LAMMERS

ETHIOPIAN jazz band Black Jesus Experience will headline the inaugural four-day Jazzamanca festival in Hobart.

The nine-piece Melbourne hip-hop and jazz group is one of several interstate bands who will perform as part of a program of 15 one-hour concerts and late-night events at the Salamanca Arts Centre in Hobart this month.

“It’s mainly mainland artists and some local talent,” says the event’s artistic director and co-host, Edward “Ted” Vining, an award-winning jazz drummer and performer with the Ted Vining Trio and the BLOW contemporary jazz ensemble.

Jazz artist Ted Vining is the man behind Jazzamanca.

“They’re all very different. Black Jesus and Wanderlust will be performing music you can dance to.

“I know the Black Jesus group very well because they play regularly at a venue I also play at in Melbourne. It’s a very popular band.”

Vining says Wanderlust is a seven-piece group from Canberra and Sydney “led by a wonderful trumpet player named Miroslav Bukovsky”.

“It’s a world-music type band performing all types of jazz music,’’ Vining says. “They are internationals. They’ve played all around the world and been together for something like 25 years. They’re very special.”

The Salamanca Arts Centre has bought a Kawai mini grand piano especially for the event.

Vining says the idea for the festival came to him 27 years ago, when he was visiting Hobart with his band BLOW to play at a jazz festival at the Salamanca Arts Centre.

“It was a weekend festival and it was incredibly successful, but they’ve never run another one since, so I thought, ‘Why not’,’’ he says.

Vining trialled the concept at a one-off event 12 months ago, and then successfully pitched the idea for a multi-day festival to the chief executive of the Salamanca Arts Centre, Joe Bugden.

The result is a varied program of ticketed and free concerts featuring nine groups, including two from the Tasmanian Conservatorium of Music — the Gus Leighton Quartet and Dave Cavallo Quartet — performing as part of “The Best of the Con”.

Melbourne’s Michelle Nicolle Quartet, which won the 2017 Bell Australian Jazz Award for Vocal Album of the Year, will open the event on February 27.

The Michelle Nicolle Quartet will be performing in Hobart as part of Jazzamanca.

“They are an internationally travelled, recorded and awarded group,” says Vining, who hopes the festival will help increase the audience for jazz in Hobart.

Other performers include the Nick Haywood Quartet, the Ted Vining Trio and Nock/Stuart/Wilson/Zwartz playing piano, drums, saxophones and bass respectively.

“Jazz is just not popular any more,’’ Vining says. “It’s having a lean time, probably all around the world. The vibrant place for it is still New York, where there’s a lot of clubs. But there are a lot more musicians who just can’t get a gig.

“Melbourne is probably best-served with jazz clubs in Australia.

“My hope is to increase the audience for jazz music in Hobart, and when the event makes a profit or breaks even, make it a regular event in Hobart.”

Jazzamanca runs from Thursday, February 27, until Sunday, March 1, in the Founders Room and courtyard at Salamanca Arts Centre. Limited festival passes are available for $198 plus booking fees. There are free and ticketed events. For more information and to buy tickets go to salarts.org.au/port folio/jazzamanca/about-jazzamanca