With Easter rapidly approaching, things seem to be heating up around the jazz festival.
I say ‘heating up' because in the last few days I've had heated discussions – which some people less attuned to the subtleties of musical discussions might have mistaken for arguments – with two local musicians about the festival.

One was complaining that the jazz festival these days doesn't have enough actual jazz, the other insisting that the programme actually includes too much jazz.
Fortuitously I have a very loud voice so was easily able to compete in these discussions, and I was aided by the factor of true belief – I think the festival programme is extremely good, impressively walking the fine line between a purist approach, which can possibly fail to excite a wider audience, and the ‘broad tent' philosophy that can lead to the event becoming a ‘jazz' festival in name only.
But I think that the fact people feel so passionately about the festival, which these musicians clearly do, is nothing but a good thing, because it is indicative of how much the people of Tauranga have taken personal ownership of the event and have a real emotional attachment to it.
Because that is, and has long been, one of the main reasons the festival is so successful.
By comparison, the Rotorua Blues Festival is happening again at the beginning of June (details closer to the time). Just as the Tauranga jazz festival is The National Jazz Festival so Rotorua is about as close as there is to a National Blues Festival. Yet despite a consistently great programme, their previous festival has simply not attracted the numbers they so patently deserve. And the reason is that the organisers have not so far been able to forge that bond, so that the local community thinks of and takes pride in the event as ‘their own'.
And now that festival organisers here have released the full programme of what's happening downtown and at the Historic Village, the real scope and ambition is apparent and, although there may be some small niggles about the odd gap, it is one helluva line-up.
And not a few people have noticed that.
It's not a coincidence that this year the festival is host to the Jazz Tui Award. This is part of the national music awards and it has been the practice in recent years to announce the winners of various ‘niche' categories at particular festivals (the country one happens down in Gore). Initially the Manawatu Jazz Festival snagged the Jazz Tui – under the influence of a certain Mr Fox, the festival director, one assumes – but now it has come to its rightful home, the National Jazz Festival.
This is not only a bit of justified prestige, but the basis for a fabulous concert with each of the three finalists, Reuben Bradley and Tessa Quayle (both from Wellington) and Sumo Jazz from Christchurch. These are not ‘up and coming' artists. The finalists for the Tuis are the crème-de-la-crème of New Zealand jazz and it will be a night to remember (Friday, April 22).
Another change this year is that the (vaguely) contentious ‘Maori Stage' downtown in Aspen Reserve is no more. This is also nothing but a good thing. I always thought it was a slightly crazy idea, although I appreciate that funding might have become available simply from the simple act of branding, and I understand the well-intentioned ideas behind the concept.
What replaces it, however, is far more exciting and still allows a platform for artists who interpret jazz through a Tangata Whenua lens. It is the World of Jazz Stage, WOJAZZ, our own mini WOMAD, and has a fascinating slate of bands including Carolina Moon's Mother Tongue Project, an extraordinary musical (ad)venture around Carolina Moon's new CD, Mother Tongue, which was recently launched at the WOMAD festival. As eclectic as all get-up, this is the haunting songs and grooves from the heart of medieval Judeo Spain and features Nigel Gavin (guitar) Roger Manis (sax), Kevin Field (keyboards), Matthias Erdrich (bass) and Ron Samson (drums), about as fine a band as you could ever hope for. They play on Saturday and Sunday at 3.30pm.
There really is so much remarkable music. For more information, visit www.jazz.org.nz.