BRECON Jazz Festival 2018 sees a new collaboration with the promoter of ‘Jazz Futures’, which began in 2016, in an initiative to promote and develop new generation jazz talents on the major festival and concert stages in the UK.

‘Saturday at the Festival’ in August will see two ensembles with musicians who are making waves as part of an emerging body of leading performers who are also composers and new improvisers. The Jazz Festival team, in collaboration with curator Marc Edwards, were able to apply for and gain ‘sustainability’ funding to support this work from the Brecon Beacons National Parks (Sustainable Development Fund). It is creating sustainable growth in both a business and artistic sense, introducing new artists to new audiences. But the initiative has also been supported by a local provider of hospitality in the Brecon area: he was so moved by the ethos of the ‘new’ in the Jazz Futures bands he heard, that he offered to help fund the current programme.

So Festival-goers this year will have the opportunity to hear two highly distinctive ‘NEW GENERATION’ lineups - and a total of 18 musicians.

The group Manchester Jazz Connection comprises two bands in collaboration: ‘Artephis’ with some of northern England’s most creatively diverse young musicians, who met originally at Manchester’s Royal Northern College of Music and have worked together since. Also involved in this large ensemble are members of ‘The Untold Orchestra’ and they too are Manchester-based. This brilliant and innovative multi-lineup, which was created especially for this concert performance, can be heard at Brecon Jazz Festival on Saturday, August 11 on the Guildhall stage at 2pm.

Leader of the band Tom Smith Septet and alto saxophonist, Tom Smith is a graduate of London’s Royal Academy of Music and a BBC Young Jazz Musician finalist in 2014 and 2016. The band’s members are some of the most talked-about young jazz musicians working in the UK. The Septet’s musical style draws on the ‘swing’ and ‘blues’ traditions of jazz, but this concert will feature new compositions as well as their own arrangements of jazz standards. Curator Marc Edwards describes a thrilling performance of the Septet in Reading, before a packed audience, while a colleague summed it up directly: ‘with these guys around, the future of jazz is in safe hands!’. The Septet can be heard at Brecon Jazz Festival on Saturday, August 11 at the Wellington Hotel (Wellesley Suite) at 4pm.

The Festival organisers, who also run Brecon Jazz Club, said that they were delighted to be working with Marc Edwards and the Jazz Futures musicians, which developed their own efforts in promoting what they have termed the ‘new professionals’ of jazz - and which will be showcased at the club in July.

They said that Tom Smith and the Septet will also be ‘blasting out their high energy notes’ in a space that at one time hosted the original jazz club itself. Thus, the team paid tribute to the new management of the Wellington Hotel for working with them to support this concert, and they also wished to thank Brecon Town Council, who are supporting the Festival as a whole, as well as the specific sponsors of the ‘Jazz Futures’ 2018 programme itself. Tickets for the Festival events can be purchased at Bobbins of Brecon or online at www.breconjazz.org

Brecon Jazz Club’s July event also features graduate jazz musicians from RWCMD in Cardiff: Tuesday, July 10 only £10/£8, starts 7.15pm.