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MOSSEL BAY NEWS - The launch of the Mos Jazz Festival took place on Friday night, 17 November.
The festival will take place in March 2018 in Mossel Bay.
The launch on Friday was simply to introduce the concept to roleplayers and stakeholders and request their buy-in to the idea.
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It was fitting the event was held at the Fork and Train restaurant at Santos Beach, because this is already home to jazz gigs on weekends.
Guests were entertained by Mossel Bay's G Minor, who came second in the Battle of the Jazz Bands this year. They gave a gutsy, extra-long performance.
There was a fun, relaxed atmosphere. Guests mingled and chatted freely and enjoyed boogeying to popular tunes, a mix of old and new.
The star of the show was Caleb Cupido on sax. At the tender age of 15, he is already an impressive musician.
His grandfather played with Ocean Breeze before the band was even known by that name.
Super-confident Caleb, a Heiderand resident and in Grade 10 at Point High School, said: "My grandfather, now deceased, got me into music. I started playing sax when I was eight. I'm going to study music in Cape Town, then head overseas. I want to play for millions of people."
Camissa Solutions, the company organising the Mos Jazz Festival in Mossel Bay, is the founder of the popular annual Jazz on the Rocks festival at Paternoster on the West Coast.
The Cape Town-based firm has hired the services of highly experienced Marilyn Thompson, who was the first publicist for the North Sea Jazz Festival, now known as the Cape Town International Jazz Festival, which is the fourth largest of its kind in the world.
Thompson told guests at the launch that she had retired when asked to work on the Mos Jazz Festival and no company besides Camissa Solutions could have dragged her off her verandah, where she had been enjoying leisurely sipping a beer and reading a book a day.
She said "yes" to Camissa because it really cared about uplifting communities. The Mos Jazz Festival would have poitive spin-offs for Mossel Bay, Camissa CEO Lovetta Bolters assured guests. "Local musicians will be empowered."
She said the long-term view was to get young people involved in producing the festival and to have them in management positions in five years' time. Eventually they would be employed for longer than merely the fest period.
Clarence Ford, a Camissa founder and executive member, said: "Jazz is about freedom, respect and expression."
Referring to the beauty of Paternoster and Mossel Bay, he said: "Music heals people and so does nature, so we put music in nature."
ARTICLE & PHOTOS: LINDA SPARG, MOSSEL BAY ADVERTISER JOURNALIST'
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