[Dixielandjazz] Festival in Hungary

[Tamas Ittzes]

Dear listmates,

If you care for helping to keep traditional jazz alive in Central
Europe, please, read on:

As some (maybe most) of you know, we have an international festival (the
Bohem Ragtime & Jazz Festival - home page at: www.bohemragtime.com) in
Hungary which is the only festival in Europe (as far as I know) that
puts emphasis on featuring ragtime, too. We have the 15th Festival in
March 2006 and since we have a very limited budget, we really rely on
attendance and especially guests from abroad who generate not only
ticket sales but also hotel nights etc. thus make our festival more
attractive to sponsors, too. Anyway, we have printed flyers about our
2006 event and would like to mail them around. I definitely will mail
them to festivals and ask them to make the flyers available to the
public but also would like to ask all of you if you run (or are a member
of/or are in contact with) a jazz society that would be willing to hand
or mail out our flyers, maybe even write a few words about our event,
please, let me know. We would be happy to mail flyers to interested
individuals, too.

We not only sell tickets and book hotel rooms but would be happy to
organize additional programs and give all kinds of help for anyone who
is interested. All details, application form can be downloaded from our
website at www.bohemragtime.com - there is information about the coming
bands (still being completed), photos and even an mp3 file of each
performer all available for download.

Our festival is a tiny one compared to big events like the greater
festivals in North America or Breda, Dresden and Ascona in Europe, but
it has a very friendly atmosphere and the audience is always superb -
not to mention Hungarian cuisine. Since we have put together a pretty
good program, we hope to draw a pretty good crowd from abroad, too - but
we certainly would need your help in this. The line up includes a few
favourites of the past 14 festivals and also new names to the Hungarian
audience: three of the greatest ragtime pianists of today (John Arpin,
Mimi Blais and Morten Gunnar Larsen), the Ophelia Ragtime Orchestra
(voted as world's best ragtime orchestra in the Mississippi Rag),
Andor's Jazz Band from Holland, The Belgrade Dixieland Orchestra
(Serbia), Matthias Seuffert and Herbert Christ (both from Germany) as
guests of my band, the Bohem Ragtime Jazz Band and many other Hungarian
performers.

I personally have lost many thousands of dollars on this festival over
the years but still have the activity, ability and willingness to
organize it and I certainly hope that we can soon turn it into a
well-established non-profit festival (so we can always generate a little
money for next year - last four years we broke even, but next year's
program requires much more money). Since we still have no budget for
advertising the Festival too much, this is rather a plea and I hope,
nobody feels offended by taking it as a commercial mailing.

Thanks,

Tamas
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Tamas ITTZES - violin teacher, ragtime pianist, festival organizer
Bohem Ragtime Jazzband, Kecskemet Jazz Foundation
Mailing address: H-6001 KECSKEMET, Pf. 652., Hungary
Phone: +36(20)82-447-82
E-mails: tamas at bohemragtime.com, bohem at fibermail.hu
Web site: http://www.bohemragtime.com
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