Mar 30, 2026 10:30 PM
Flea Finds His Jazz Thing
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The Detroit Jazz Festival, which ran during the long Labor Day weekend, reports that about one million people viewed or listened to performances this year.
Sets were streamed from the Detroit Marriott at the Renaissance Center with only select press representatives, production teams and musicians in attendance for more than 40 hours of music because of the pandemic.
“Looking back, we can now truly appreciate the cultural event we created for the worldwide jazz community and all of the effort to keep our mission of free jazz alive during a global pandemic that sidelined most of the other major music festivals around the world,” said Chris Collins, president and artistic director of the festival, in a press release.
The festival said it measured about 600,000 viewers and listeners on its own platforms, with television and radio pushing the numbers up further.
In 2019, the festival said, there were “1,000 new subscribers to the app/livestreams during the four-day event,” and that average in-person attendance was about 325,000. DB
“Cerebral and academic thought is a different way to approach music,” Flea says of his continuing dive into jazz. “I’ve always relied on emotion and intuition and physicality.”
Mar 30, 2026 10:30 PM
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