Clear your diaries now for 2011 | May 20th-22nd | sponsored again by Ann et Vin...

Wow! What a weekend. Newark’s 2010 coalition-style Jazz Festival showed, once again, what can be achieved when everyone works together...

The hired piano couldn’t go back straight away because the keys were still white hot after Jeff Barnhart’s searing sessions through Saturday. The standard set by the jaw-dropping opening Enrico Tomasso Sextet never dropped, through the mesmerising Curios set all the way to Tim Garland’s life-changing concert with Derby’s young Hot House Big Band. It reduced grown men to tears. Honest!

And, either the coffee was great or the jazz was even better at Stray’s where there was standing (on shoulders) room only. Phew!

We expect several airports to be closed again after the the Brass Volcanoes erupted twice to packed houses at The Mayze, Festval-goers wandered giddily away from the Malt Shovel after being spun by Dizzy About Gillespie! and Tim Kliphuis had to lie down after his stonking Swing Improvisation workshop attracted ‘the widest variety of instruments and nationalities I’ve ever had the pleasure to teach in one session.’

The spectacularly decorated brollies were a Godsend during Sunday’s huge Jazz Parade - to provide shade from the blistering sun. Hundreds of children danced and swayed around the streets of Newark in pursuit of the exuberant Grand Marshall Sullivan Dabney and Andrew Hall’s Society Brass Band, showing us all how it’s done in New Orleans. The Mississippi meets the Trent again!