Last week the programme for the 2010 National Jazz was unveiled, and mighty impressive it is too.
I'm going to be coming back to this at regular intervals over the next few months but as early bird tickets are now available I thought a quick rave before Christmas was in order.

Because I just wanted to say… Dr John!
Wow. That's really raising the bar. I don't think the festival organisers could have picked a better choice as their ‘big ticket' headline act. He's someone with absolute credibility, yet is known by a far broader public than just self-avowed jazz or blues fans.
The first time I heard of him was when, as an impressionable teenager, I went to see Martin Scorsese's concert film The Last Waltz. I was young enough that going to the cinema by myself was still a novelty and an adventure, and it was only the second time I'd been to the magnificent Civic in Auckland.
(The first was to watch 2001: A Space Odyssey, which permanently warped my fragile developing mind and created a life-long obsession with Stanley Kubrick, but that, as they say, is another story…)
The Last Waltz is a great concert movie, one that I still enjoy immensely, but at that first viewing a couple of things stuck in my mind. The first was the moment when Eric Clapton's guitar strap fell off while he was soloing in Further On Up The Road. As a nascent teenage guitarist just in his first band, I was over the moon: those sorts of things didn't just plague us beginners - it could even happen to Clapton!
The second was the strange bow-tied apparition who emerged to the piano and sang the absolutely wonderful Such a Night. What a great song! What a great voice! The man was, of course, Dr John and I've loved his music ever since.
I'm guessing that most people are vaguely familiar with the legendary New Orleans musician. That song and Right Place, Wrong Time still seem to be in rotation on FM rock radio stations. But here are three things you probably don't know about the man who will be coming to Tauranga for two concerts at Easter.
1) His first name is Malcolm. Yep. Not quite as hip as Dr John, or even the name he went by in his early career, Mac Rebennack. No, his given name was Malcolm John Rebennack Jr.
2) Dr John's original instrument wasn't piano, it was guitar. It was playing guitar that he had his first minor hit in 1959 with Storm Warning. His guitar-playing career came to an end when a gunshot injured his left ring finger as he attempted to defend a band mate. He then tried bass guitar, before finally settling on piano.
3) When you hear Carly Simon and James Taylor sing Mockingbird, that's Dr John on the backing piano. He has done a million sessions. In the late sixties he played on Canned Heat's two seminal boogie albums, Living The Blues and Future Blues. A decade later he was on Ricky Lee Jones' brilliant debut album (yes, the one with Chuck E's in Love on it).
So, Dr John… good call. He's doing two shows at Baycourt and I plan to be there for both of them. Like the recent Ry Cooder concert in Auckland, this counts as a Things To Do Before I Die opportunity.
And I seem to be running out of space before even vaguely doing justice to the rest of the programme. It is, naturally, all online at the festival website, www.jazz.org.nz The website itself is looking very sophisticated these days. Well worth a look.
Let me just list a couple of things you can find there that are exciting me: Hammond organ virtuoso Brian Auger; Global Breakthrough, the two night dance party at the Classic Flyers Museum Hangar at the Mount (with Nathan Haines, Opensouls, DJ Pierre-Estienne); and Jazz at the Movies, for which British silent movie composer Paul Lewis has created a new music score to accompany rare New Zealand film footage, including scenes from the 1967 Orange Festival in the Bay of Plenty.
There's much much more too of course. Check it out.