Tarragona International Dixieland Festival

Since the restoration of democratic local governments, jazz had been recovered as a stable form of the different cultural programs during the year.

As other Catalan and Spanish cities already had jazz festivals in a generic sense, the Town Hall of Tarragona opted to specialize in Dixieland.

Some journalists have considered it as one of the four most important Dixieland festivals in Europe: Breda (Netherlands), Dresden (Germany), Miskolc (Hungary) and Tarragona (Spain).

In fact, the Festival reaches schoolchildren from schools in Tarragona and housewives who daily come across the bands in the different markets.

The opportunity for local musicians to play with some of the great stars of Catalan, European and American jazz, sometimes during the same jam and on the same stage, has no doubt been an incentive to take into account.

The Tarragona Festival has helped dixieland to be present today in public and private programmes in Catalonia.

All these groups are in position to perform not only in specialised circles but also in official ceremonies, inaugurations, publicity campaigns and popular celebrations.

In the section about the groups that have taken part in the Festival you can see that the standard of high artistic quality has been constant in all the previous years.

* Support to training and professional development for young musicians The Dixieland Festival of Tarragona has never been exclusively focused on great stars, but has gone for the integration of new bands, especially the youngest, in the program.