Northampton Jazz Festival

The Northampton Jazz Festival seeks to expand the exposure of people of all generations, ethnicities and orientations to live jazz, bring new visitors to downtown Northampton, and increase the cultural vitality and economic strength of the city. In so doing, the Northampton Jazz Festival is dedicated to carrying forward our great American music tradition of live jazz for generations to come.

The Northampton Jazz Festival stages live jazz music in downtown Northampton in multiple venues over a two day period, thus bringing audience members to a variety of locations downtown. All but the headliner concert at the 800 seat Academy of Music are free and open to the general public. We stage performances from Grammy Award winning, internationally renowned jazz artists to local student groups, with nearly every age, ethnicity and sexual orientation of musician represented. On Friday, Jazz Strut night, audiences not only patronize the six or seven breweries, bars and restaurants downtown where we stage jazz ensembles of primarily local, student and regional musicians, but they also move up and down Main St. Northampton as they attend concerts in four or five different venues on Saturday, Jazz Fest Day. The venues are mostly indoors (churches, small performance halls) where we stage concerts by jazz artists from throughout the northeast, as well as outside at Pulaski Park on Main Street in the heart of downtown. Merchants and restaurants benefit from the over 2,000 people we bring to town on jazz fest weekend. We have no food vendors; we want audience members to frequent all that downtown Northampton has to offer.