THE International Committee of the Queen’s College of Guyana Alumni Associations (ICQC), in collaboration with Healing Arts Foundation and the Theatre Guild, will host its inaugural jazz festival, dubbed ‘G-JAZZ 2015’, from December 11 to December 14, 2015, in Georgetown, Guyana.

The event will be held at the Garden Theatre (The Theatre Guild) in Kingston, and it will be distinguished from other festivals by its developmental focus.
The festival is meant not only to provide enjoyment, but to project Jazz that is created, performed and inspired by Guyanese.
This platform has also inspired the compiling of the Guyanese Jazz Songbook.
Guyana has a very strong tradition of Jazz music composition and recording, which, to some extent, is not remembered. Folks at SSignal Productions have been able to identify some early Jazz music from Guyana, and have compiled it into the present Guyanese Jazz Songbook.
G-Jazz hopes to give new life to the Jazz genre of music by re-interpreting excellent works already published.
The organising body also expects to be able to augment and extend this songbook with entries from new artistes, some of whom will appear at the festival alongside overseas-based Jazz artistes Ruth Osman, Derry Etkins, David McAlmont, Courtney Fadlin and locally-based producers such as Mark Hall and Trevor John of the GT Jazz Project, who will also be hot items at the event.
Heavy emphasis will be placed on youth involvement. Tickets for the event are available at the Queen’s College Centre of Excellence in The Arts; the Joshua House Orphanage; Help and Shelter; Theatre Guild; the University of Guyana; the Lisa Punch Foundation, and the Tina Insanally Foundation.