The Festival International de Jazz de Montréal (English: Montreal International Jazz Festival) is an annual jazz festival held in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. The Montreal Jazz Fest holds the 2004 Guinness World Record as the world's largest jazz festival. Every year it features roughly 3,000 artists from 30-odd countries, more than 650 concerts (including 450 free outdoor performances), and welcomes close to 2.5 million visitors (34% of whom are tourists) as well as 400 accredited journalists. The festival takes place at 10 free outdoor stages and 10 indoor concert halls.

A major part of the city's downtown core is closed to traffic for ten days, as free outdoor shows are open to the public and held on many stages at the same time, from noon until midnight. Attendance at some shows is over 100,000 people, and occasionally exceeds 200,000.^{[citation needed]} Shows are held in a wide variety of venues, from relatively small jazz clubs to the large concert halls of Place des Arts. Some of the outdoor shows are held on the cordoned-off streets, while others are in terraced parks.

Montréal-Pierre Elliott Trudeau International Airport (IATA: YUL, ICAO: CYUL) (French: Aéroport international Pierre-Elliott-Trudeau de Montréal) or Montréal-Trudeau, formerly known as Montréal-Dorval International Airport, is located on the Island of Montreal, 20 km (12 mi) from Montreal's downtown core. The airport terminals are located entirely in Dorval, while the Air Canada headquarters complex and one runway is located in Saint-Laurent, Montreal. It is an international airport serving Greater Montreal, along with the regions of northern Vermont and New York.

The airport is one of two managed and operated by Aéroports de Montréal (ADM), a not-for-profit corporation without share capital; the other airport is Montréal-Mirabel northwest of Montreal, which was initially intended to replace the one in Dorval but now deals almost solely with cargo. Montréal-Trudeau is owned by Transport Canada, which has a 60-year lease with Aéroports de Montréal, as per Canada's National Airport Policy of 1994.

Montreal (ⁱ/ˌmʌntriːˈɒl/;French: Montréal; pronounced [mɔ̃ʁeal] ( listen)) is a city in Canada. It is the largest city in the province of Quebec, the second-largest city in Canada and the fifteenth largest in North America. Originally called Ville-Marie, or "City of Mary", the city takes its present name from Mount Royal, the triple-peaked hill located in the heart of the city, or Mont Réal as it was spelled in Middle French (Mont Royal in present French). The city is located on the Island of Montreal, which took its name from the same source as the city, and a few much smaller peripheral islands, the largest of which is Île Bizard.

As of May 10, 2011, Statistics Canada identifies Montreal's Census Metropolitan Area (CMA) (land area 4,259 square kilometres (1,644 sq mi)) as Canada's second most populous with an estimated metropolitan area population of 3,824,221 and a population of 1,886,481 in the urban agglomeration of Montreal, which includes all of the municipalities on the Island of Montreal. The city of Montreal proper had a population of 1,649,519.

This is a list of notable jazz music festivals, broken down geographically. The festivals mentioned here should have at least some international recognition.

Alabama

Alaska

Arkansas

California

Colorado

Connecticut

Florida

Georgia

Idaho

Illinois

Indiana

Iowa

Louisiana

Maryland

Massachusetts

Michigan

Minnesota

Missouri

Nebraska

Nevada

New Jersey

New York

Pennsylvania

Rhode Island

South Dakota

Tennessee

Texas

Utah

Vermont

Washington

Wisconsin

Virginia

Charles Edward Haden (born August 6, 1937) is an American jazz musician. He is a double bassist, probably best known for his long association with saxophonist Ornette Coleman. Haden is also known for his signature lyrical bass lines.

Haden was born in Shenandoah, Iowa, and raised in a musical family, which often performed together on the radio playing country music and American folk songs. Haden made his professional debut as a singer when he was two years old, and continued singing with his family until he contracted a mild form of polio when he was 15. The polio damaged his throat muscles and vocal cords, and as a result, Haden was unable to control his pitch while singing. A few years before contracting polio, Haden had become interested in jazz, and began playing his older brother's double bass. Eventually he set his sights on Los Angeles, and to save money for the trip took a job as house bassist for ABC-TV's Ozark Jubilee in Springfield, Missouri.

Haden moved to Los Angeles in 1957. His first recordings were made that year with Paul Bley. He began recording with Ornette Coleman shortly after, including the important The Shape of Jazz to Come. Haden's folk-influenced style complemented the microtonal, Texas blues elements of Coleman. Haden would enter Keith Jarrett's trio and his 'American Quartet' from 1967 to 1976 with Paul Motian and Dewey Redman. He also played in the collective Old and New Dreams.