An online version of the country’s biggest jazz festival will be livestreamed May 8-11, as the ongoing coronavirus pandemic keeps jazz fans at home.

Dubbed the Jarasum Online Alright Jazz Festival, the organizers of Jarasum International Jazz Festival said that it will be the first local music festival to be streamed online. The event aims to offer performance opportunities to local jazz musicians who have been struggling with the virus crisis, and also to encourage the stagnant performance scene.

 

Performances by local jazz artists -- including Heo So-young Trio, Kim Oki Saturn Ballad, Southern Gyeonggi Jazz and more -- will be streamed live, followed by videos of past performances at the Jarasum festival by legendary artists.

Viewers can watch the performances via the festival’s official YouTube channel or through Naver TV Live during the three-day online festival period. Artists are to perform without an audience at a recording studio in Music Village 1939, a former train station transformed into a music complex in Gapyeong, Gyeonggi Province. The studio is near Jarasum, the tiny island in Gapyeong where the annual jazz festival is held.

While the online festival is free, the organizers will raise funds through crowdfunding platform Tumblbug until May 8. The contribution will be used for the management of the Jarasum Online Alright Jazz Festival, including payments to artists and streaming costs.

The annual Jarasum International Jazz Festival on Jara Island in Gapyeong, launched in 2004, has become one of the most successful music festivals in Korea.

Hosted on a once-abandoned island, it has garnered a total of 2 million attendees over the past 16 years, inviting 1,118 artist acts across 55 countries from Asia, Europe and the Americas. This year, the Jarasum International Jazz Festival will take place Oct. 9-11.

By Im Eun-byel (silverstar@heraldcorp.com)