Jazz Festivals in the Time of COVID-19: Exploring Exposed Fragilities, Community Resilience and Industry Recovery

This chapter considers how four festivals across the UK—Brecon Jazz Festival, Brilliant Corners in Belfast, Edinburgh Jazz & Blues Festival, and Manchester Jazz Festival—have adapted their processes and practices in order to reimagine the jazz festival during the COVID-19 pandemic and in the emerging post-pandemic period. We explore challenges and opportunities through the virtual live music experience; the longevity of economic models developed during COVID-19; relationships with audiences, musicians and funders; and changes in the role of festivals and their teams. Building on our previous work, we maintain that the jazz scene is a particularly fragile and fragmentary element within the wider UK music industries. In the absence of certain useful infrastructure—such as agents and touring networks—many jazz musicians rely upon the festival circuit. This reliance became increasingly apparent during the COVID-19 pandemic when the cancellation of music festivals removed a large seasonal component of musicians’ annual income. We argue that the insights explored through this genre-specific example will offer general lessons for the UK music industries as they look towards a post-pandemic future.