Tauranga Jazz Festival 2012

Tauranga celebrated its 50th Jazz festival milestone with nearly 50 different bands this Easter, a far cry from it's humble beginnings in 1963. Tauranga's Dave Proud has been involved with the festival from its early beginnings and remembers the nay-sayers 50 years ago declaring “you'll never get it off the ground”.
The Creative Tauranga display put together by Jocelyn Buchanan and on display over the Easter holidays sums up how wrong they were with the “Figure This” wall showing the statistics below.

• 40 musicians in 1963
• 500 musicians in 2012
• 1000 attended in 1963
• 60000 aattended in 2010
• 50-pound budget in 1963
• $1,400,000
  budget in 2012
• 25 records produced
• 15 videos produced
• 47 years run by volunteers
  
  Bay news quotes festival organiser Arne Herrmann as having “pulled out all the stops” for this year. The lineup of bands included many homegrown acts from around New Zealand as well as overseas groups. The Riverina All Stars came back together specifically to celebrate the occasion.
  
  Crowds enjoyed the music and atmosphere at The Historic Village in Tauranga, as well as the Central City, Downtown and Aspen Reserve (among other sites) and this year the reintroduction of vintage and veteran cars only added to the atmosphere.
  
  
  
  By Rosalie Crawford