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The Tauranga National Jazz Festival is a lunar event; dates change each year depending on the moon.
Here’s how it works: the core jazz festival is on Easter weekend, and Easter itself falls on a Sunday between March 22 and April 25.
The rule is that Easter is the first Sunday after the full moon that occurs on or after the Spring Equinox. If that full moon falls on a Sunday, then Easter is the following Sunday. Pretty simple? Yeah right.
There is, of course, more ...
The Spring Equinox used to calculate this is not actually the true equinox. Who knew? In fact it’s an artificial one, decreed to always happen on March 21.
And the full moon used is not the true full moon but an artificial construct based on the Metonic cycle. What’s the Metonic cycle? I get lost around here but it’s basically to do with calculating leap years, and it clashes with the Gregorian calendar and messes up the whole Easter calculation. Instead you need an algorithm, a mere five calculations, which will tell you the date of Easter. Seriously.
Two things
Let’s skip to the chorus: this year Easter is on nearly the latest possible date it can fall, April 20.
That means two things: firstly, jazz festival organisers get longer to organise and sell tickets; secondly, it’s easy to forget about it since it seems so far away. This could be a mistake. It’s the longest jazz festival I can remember, starting a good fortnight before Easter and running for two full weeks. Some early events are already selling out.
There’s a splendid piece on SunLive about the Baycourt concert series – search ‘Stellar Concert Series’ – so instead let’s look at the X-Space concerts.
Jess Deacon. Photo / Supplied
I’ve got my eye on three: there’s singer Jess Dixon, who puts original lyrics and vocalese to jazz standards, a one-woman Manhattan transfer with a great band; and Lockie Bennett’s Boplicity Quartet is exactly that, a must-see for lovers of Charlie Parker, Bud Powell and other pioneers of bebop.
And there’s English clarinet player Adrian Cox, a young man known for his complete immersion in the “lost” ragtime styles of very early New Orleans jazz.
Adrian Cox Trio. Photo / Supplied
He calls his show Makin’ Runs, the name of a tune attributed to legendary – but too early to be recorded – trumpet player Buddy Bolden, the phrase symbolising Bolden’s vision for inventive improvisations whilst never repeating himself. Sounds special.
April 7
The festival actually starts on April 7 with the three-day Youth Jazz competitions, leading straight into the three-night Jam Factory series, at least one of which has unsurprisingly already sold out – what a great intimate venue for jazz!
On the Saturday before Easter, April 12, Katikati get into the act with a free daytime street festival, and there are ancillary events all through that week, from jazz at the Mount Hot Pools to the Uptown Downtown programme of bands in CBD and Mount bars and cafés.
Look for yourself – it’s all at: jazz.org.nz.
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