[2][3] The festival is Ireland's biggest jazz event and attracts hundreds of musicians and thousands of music fans to the city each year.

[5] Mountjoy was a marketing manager of the Metropole Hotel in the city at the time, and, faced with filling his property for the weekend, scheduled the first jazz festival to coincide with the newly instituted October bank holiday.

[11] He also travelled to the UK, mainland Europe, Canada and the United States to promote the festival.

[11] Non-jazz artists also play at the festival – for example the 2015 line-up included Gary Numan, The Boomtown Rats, and The Coronas.

[15] As of 2010, over one million jazz fans had visited Cork[7] to hear noted jazz musicians such as: Ella Fitzgerald, George Shearing, Mel Torme, Wynton Marsalis, Buddy Rich, Herbie Hancock, Oscar Peterson, Billy Eckstine, Dizzy Gillespie, Lionel Hampton, Cleo Laine, Dave Brubeck, Chick Corea, Gerry Mulligan, Stéphane Grappelli, Sonny Rollins, Esbjorn Svensson Trio, Al Di Meola, John McLaughlin, Gregory Porter, Billy Cobham, Damon Albarn and others.