With Thanks From The OzManouche Festival Team

Thanks to all who attended OzManouche this year. Welcome back, everyone! We had capacity audiences for every show making this year's events one of the most successful ever. I think we were able to create the festival atmosphere that we know, love and have missed for the last two years.

We extended the program this year by creating a second acoustic performance area on the club's deck to give a place for upcoming bands and community jam groups a place to present their music. I was so pleased to see audiences listening and supporting these performances. Seeing that concept work was one of my highlights of the festival. And I'm pleased to say that it will now be an ongoing feature of the program in the future.

This year we saw the return of interstate and international guests, including our first international guest since 2019 and one of the first International guests in the festival’s history, Michel Trabelsi. Our patron, Ian Date, returned triumphantly after the pandemic-induced absence reuniting with his long-time musical foil, George Washingmachine. We also saw the legendary Hank Marvin and his wife Carol at OzManouche this year. Thank you both for your enthusiastic support for the festival and the special guest performances with Ian over the weekend.

Other returning festival favourites this year were La Mauvaise Réputation from Melbourne. Thank you especially to Paul, Enzo, Sal and Adam of La Mauvaise Réputation for inviting me onstage to honour the memory of our friend and festival favourite, Jon Delaney. And lastly, long-time festival performer Sam Cooke from Wellington, New Zealand, returned to lead our jam on Sunday afternoon.

We also saw some festival debuts this year with My interstate project featuring Pauline Maudy and Roberto Fontana from Brisbane, Sverre Molland from the A.C.T and Oscar Peterson and Myself from Sydney. Blue Reed from Far North Queensland, The Gypsyjazz Project from Canberra and jam collective Sydney Gypsies, which featured members from all over Sydney, Wollongong and the Lower Blue Mountains regions.

OzManouche isn’t just my doing. There’s an amazing team of people working alongside me to make everything happen, and I would like to take the time to give them the credit they deserve. Ronnie Woods, our producer and treasurer, thank you for your trust and faith and for forgiving me when I spend too much money! Paul Day, Allan Western, Karli and Sue, the committee, duty officers, bar staff, and volunteers at the Brisbane Jazz Club, Mark Smith, for his brilliant work on sound production. Mary Brettell for the photography and social media admin, and Irene Ypenberg for the artwork and design. Camaron De La Vega for co-ordinating the after-show jams on Friday and Saturday. And the family of Ewan Mackenzie. Thank you for your support, love and encouragement.

To our sponsors, thank you for supporting us and helping to give our favourite music and musicians a home, a stage, and the attention they deserve. To Michael Smith of Gypsy Jazz Australia, thank you for ticking one of my long-term gypsy jazz bucket list items of providing a stall for participants to try instruments and accessories. I'm so glad that we were finally able to make that happen.

In upcoming news. Richard Hammernick from Radio 4EB recorded the shows over the weekend and will be making a two-hour radio documentary for broadcast in the early months of next year. I'll send an email and do social media posts when it comes out and figure out a way of posting them to the festival’s website.

Thank you all, and see you next year.

-Cameron