National Youth Jazz Festival Norway, Portugal, Serbia, Sweden, Switzerland, United States, and Zimbabwe. South African jazz students audition for places in the Standard Bank National Schools Big Band and the National Youth Jazz Band (NYJB). The NYJB performs regularly at festivals around South Africa—Grahamstown, Cape Town, Johannesburg, Durban—and has performed in New York City, Sweden and the North Sea Jazz Festival, the Netherlands. National Youth Jazz Festival The National Youth Jazz Festival runs as party of the National Arts Festival also known as the Grahamstown Festival which has been running in Grahamstown since 1974, and is the world’s second-largest single cultural festival, attracting performers
Red Sea Jazz Festival Randy Brecker & Mark Egan, The Jazz Beatles, Miroslav Vitous & John Abercrombie and Charlie Haden & John Scofield. The festival draws audiences of 70,000, with an average of 2,500 people per concert. It is run as a non-profit organization and enjoys the support of the Municipality of Eilat, the Ministries of Culture and Tourism, the Eilat Hotel Association and various business sponsors. In 2008, Israeli jazz bassist Avishai Cohen was named artistic director, replacing Dan Gottfried, who initiated the festival and served as artistic director for 22 years. During his tenure Gottfried has showcased over 1500 world-famous Jazz artists