Niagara Jazz Festival coming to Thorold this summer
The Niagara Jazz Festival is packing its bags for Thorold.
The festival’s popular Music in the Park event, a familiar sight in Niagara-on-the-Lake’s Simcoe Park for several years, will move to Thorold’s Battle of Beaverdams Park June 29.
Jazz Festival co-founder Juliet Dunn said the shift is in line with the festival’s goal to involve all 12 of Niagara's local municipalities.
“Next year we’d like to add one or two more, to get up to 12,” she said.
The free event will feature about 15 performers. In past years, it has drawn between 5,000 and 7,500 people. It will kickstart a busy three-day weekend at the park that includes a blues festival on June 30 and Canada Day celebrations July 1.
Dunn said a Thorold city council member approached the festival during its launch last year and asked how Thorold could get involved this year.
“We brainstormed, went back and forth with a few ideas,” she said. “Because they had a blues event planned for the Sunday, they’d already be set up in the park. It seemed like a natural addition for us to do a Saturday event and make it a whole weekend.
“It kind of all fit together.” The event was a multi-day festival at Simcoe Park in 2018 and 2019 but had been scaled back to one day since the pandemic.
Running 1 p.m. to 9 p.m., this year’s event will feature a main stage and secondary stage, vendors, wineries and kids activities.
Dunn stressed the move from Niagara-on-the-Lake to Thorold is not a money matter — the event usually costs about $50,000 to put on no matter where it’s located.
“It’s nothing to do with the town —they don’t charge us,” she said. “It’s a partnership.
“We’ve got to pay the artist fees, we got to pay for the fencing, insurance… when you add up all those fees, it does cost us a lot of money.”
While the Thorold park is smaller than Simcoe Park, Dunn said it will suit the event well. Especially because another music festival happens the next day.
“It’s nice to partner that way.” She’s hoping to do a street festival in Grimsby next year, one of the things she and co-founder/husband Peter Shea always wanted. Shea died of cancer two years ago.
“(Grimsby) reached out to us as well (for this year), but we’ve got to strategically grow it as opposed to doing everything all at once.”