With a mission to promote jazz 364 days a year, Upstairs Jazz Bar & Grill will now enjoy an expanded space and a synergy with the Maison du Festival de Jazz and the Festival, giving it new possibilities for international promotion--and that's excellent news for the local jazz community.
Joel Giberovitch joined Upstairs in 1995. After a few years of operating the business, he realized that Montreal was in need of a Jazz venue, with live music as the heart and soul of the club. For inspiration, he took a trip to New York and returned with the vision that we now know as the Upstairs Jazz Bar & Grill, an institution in Montreal offering a blend of great live jazz 364 days a year, tasty food, cool ambiance and friendly, efficient service. The programming at Upstairs showcases our Montreal musicians as well as national and international acts. Over the past 13 years, Upstairs has presented more than 500 great artists such as Kurt Rosenwinkel, Jeff Healy, Sheila Jordan, Dave Liebman, David Binney, Mark Murphy, Ranee Lee, Sonny Greenwich, Lorraine Desmarais, Alain Caron, Franois Bourassa, and many, many, more. Joel Giberovitch and the Festival International de Jazz de Montreal share a vision: to provide Montreal with a premier Jazz Club with an international presence.
Keep in mind that the Maison du Festival de Jazz--an extraordinary gift from the Quebec government for the 30th anniversary of the Festival--with its jazz club and expanded-capacity Upstairs, complete with an attractive terrace smack dab in the middle of the Quartier des spectacles, will serve as a year-round performance venue, a hall of fame, a gallery and permanent exhibition space, and an important audiovisual documentation centre for preserving and protecting the Festival's musical heritage. The international-calibre promotion venue for jazz and musical practice will be open to the public and is sure to become a major tourist attraction in Montreal and its Quartier de spectacles. And the seven-storey building next to the future Place des festivals will also meet the long-term requirements of producing the Festival, providing adequate premises for welcoming the press as well as technical and logistical command centres, which could in turn be used by other festivals operating in the adjacent public space.
For more information contact All About Jazz.