Festival Founder Gehan Fernando
The Mercedes Benz Colombo Jazz Festival opened on the 18th and 19th of February at the Galle Face hotel. Following on the success of it’ s inaugural festival in 2016, this year’ s event expanded to cover two days. The concept behind the festival was music, culinary and art event that promised to combine and showcase the talents of the best international jazz artists as well as artists of national renown.
The stunning heritage property the Galle Face Hotel, in Colombo, welcomed global music fans to jazz-centric celebration, where fans of all types of jazz-related music rub shoulders with aficionados of the genre. When putting together artists such as this, Mainstage Events, the organizers aimed to capture all that diversity, all that makes this art form so beautiful, in a weekend of performances.
The lineup was the culmination of the festival’ s commitment to bringing a diverse and unique group of jazz musicians to Colombo to deliver a collection of performances that included, exciting new artists, international and local jazz legends and groups all connected around presenting unique musical experiences in a first for Colombo.
Incognito, which has been labeled as everything from pop band to Latin jazz ensemble, from ' 70s-styled funk crew to acid-jazz collaboration headlined the festival. Another legend who performed was Mud Morganfield who describes the resemblance of the tone and timber of his voice to that of
his father’ s voice as a double edged sword. The similarity is evident in For Pops: A Tribute To Muddy Waters. Morganfield launched his music career in blues clubs on the south side of Chicago, where he performed a mix of his father’ s material and his own original works.
From afternoon to midnight The Mercedes Benz Colombo Jazz Festival took place at the iconic Galle Face hotel, designed to meet festival-goers’ every need, in the heart of Colombo with the beauty, sounds of the ocean and the cool breeze that drifts in, as its spectacular setting.
We had a quick chat with the Festival Founder Gehan Fernando about the show.
How do you compare the response to the Colombo Jazz Festival this year against the last year?
This was our second year while the first year was a one day inaugural one. We had about 1500 people last year and this year we have sold more tickets, lot of corporate clients and so on.
What are your intentions behind organizing this festival?
I’ m a restaurateur! I have always looked at Colombo and wondered why there is not much tourism here. I wanted to change that mainly to attract more people to visit here. Jazz is very close to my heart and hence I wanted to have an international festival with artists performing in Colombo. This
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Photo Credits: Sandun de Silva