Jazz music is many things to many people. Its rich heritage and spirit of improvisation stretch back to New Orleans in the early 1900s. A unique stew of European song forms, African polyrhythms and blues were coming together to create new rhythms and melodic ideas: ragtime and swing led to bebop and cool, fusion and funk. At its heart, jazz is an idea – a notion that human expression and experimentation deserve to be at the forefront of the live music experience.

Jazz players are thinkers, tinkerers, arrangers, people deeply in love with the human soul. Just as J Dilla (the famous producer for hip-hop legends Tribe Called Quest and De La Soul) reached deep into his jazz vinyl collection to craft his 'beats', so it is that we are drawn to the collaborative talents of jazz players. No musical genre has been untouched by jazz. In turn, jazz draws the world's musical ideas back into its many-ness.

The 2022 TD Jazz Festival is set to be a feast – 10 days of incredible solos, lush arrangements and grooves that will get you moving, all set against the backdrop of downtown Toronto.

Featuring 5 outdoor stages, festival grounds will stretch out across a very walkable set of city blocks, organized into 3 sections: Festival Village gives music lovers the low-rise charm of Cumberland Street and Belair Avenue; The OLG Grove carefully nestles two outdoor stages in the intimate grassy quad of Victoria University (part of University of Toronto campus), and The Block turns Avenue and Bloor's iconic architecture into a grand urban amphitheatre.