The Monterey Jazz Festival (MJF) is one of the longest consecutively running jazz festivals. It debuted on October 3, 1958 and was founded by San Francisco jazz radio broadcaster Jimmy Lyons.

The festival is held annually on the 20-acre (8.1 ha), oak-studded Monterey County Fairgrounds, located at 2000 Fairground Road in Monterey, California, USA on the third full weekend in September, beginning on Friday. More than 500 top jazz artists perform on nine stages spread throughout the grounds, with more than 50 concert performances. In addition, the Monterey Jazz Festival features jazz conversations, panel discussions, workshops, exhibitions, clinics, and an international array of food, shopping and festivities spread throughout the 20-acre (81,000 m²) Monterey Fairgrounds.

Since 1992, Tim Jackson has been general manager, and for fifteen years Clint Eastwood has been on MJF's board of directors. Kent and Keith Zimmerman describe the festival as having expanded in recent years: "While jazz radio and major labels cut back on musical choice and commitment, the Monterey Jazz Festival has widened its scope by expanding the parameters of jazz, blues, and rock. . . . Happily, MJF is now as diverse and vibrant as Lyons imagined it ever could be."

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

Miles Dewey Davis III (May 26, 1926 – September 28, 1991) was an American jazz musician, trumpeter, bandleader, and composer. Widely considered one of the most influential musicians of the 20th century, Miles Davis was, with his musical groups, at the forefront of several major developments in jazz music, including bebop, cool jazz, hard bop, modal jazz, and jazz fusion.

Miles Dewey Davis was born on May 26, 1926, to an affluent African American family in Alton, Illinois. His father, Dr. Miles Henry Davis, was a dentist. In 1927 the family moved to East St. Louis, Illinois. They also owned a substantial ranch in northern Arkansas, where Davis learned to ride horses as a boy.

Davis' mother, Cleota Mae (Henry) Davis, wanted her son to learn the piano; she was a capable blues pianist but kept this fact hidden from her son. His musical studies began at 13, when his father gave him a trumpet and arranged lessons with local musician Elwood Buchanan. Davis later suggested that his father's instrument choice was made largely to irk his wife, who disliked the trumpet's sound. Against the fashion of the time, Buchanan stressed the importance of playing without vibrato; he was reported to have slapped Davis' knuckles every time he started using heavy vibrato. Davis would carry his clear signature tone throughout his career. He once remarked on its importance to him, saying, "I prefer a round sound with no attitude in it, like a round voice with not too much tremolo and not too much bass. Just right in the middle. If I can’t get that sound I can’t play anything."Clark Terry was another important early influence.^{[citation needed]}

John Birks "Dizzy" Gillespie ( /ɡɨˈlɛspi/; October 21, 1917 – January 6, 1993) was an American jazz trumpeter, bandleader, composer and, occasionally, singer.

Allmusic's Scott Yanow wrote, "Dizzy Gillespie's contributions to jazz were huge. One of the greatest jazz trumpeters of all time (some would say the best), Gillespie was such a complex player that his contemporaries ended up copying Miles Davis and Fats Navarro instead, and it was not until Jon Faddis's emergence in the 1970s that Dizzy's style was successfully recreated . . . Arguably Gillespie is remembered, by both critics and fans alike, as one of the greatest jazz trumpeters of all time."

Gillespie was a trumpet virtuoso and improviser, building on the virtuoso style of Roy Eldridge but adding layers of harmonic complexity previously unknown in jazz. His beret and horn-rimmed spectacles, his scat singing, his bent horn, pouched cheeks and his light-hearted personality were essential in popularizing bebop.

In the 1940s Gillespie, together with Charlie Parker, became a major figure in the development of bebop and modern jazz. He taught and influenced many other musicians, including trumpeters Miles Davis, Fats Navarro, Clifford Brown, Arturo Sandoval, Lee Morgan, Jon Faddis and Chuck Mangione.

Callen Radcliffe Tjader, Jr. a.k.a. Cal Tjader (July 16, 1925–May 5, 1982) was a Latin jazz musician, though he also explored various other jazz idioms. Unlike other American jazz musicians who experimented with the music from Cuba, the Caribbean, and Latin America, he never abandoned it, performing it until his death.

Tjader primarily played the vibraphone. He was also accomplished on the drums, bongos, congas, timpani, and the piano. He worked with numerous musicians from several cultures. He is often linked to the development of Latin Rock and Acid Jazz. Although fusing jazz with Latin music is often categorized as "Latin Jazz" (or, earlier, "Afro-Cuban Jazz"), Tjader's output swung freely between both styles.

He won a Grammy in 1980 for his album La Onda Va Bien, capping off a career that spanned over forty years.

Callen Radcliffe Tjader, Jr. (last name pronounced "chay-der") was born 16 July 1925 in St. Louis, Missouri to touring Swedish American vaudevillians. His father tap danced and his mother played piano, a husband-wife team going from city to city with their troupe to earn a living. (His grandfather was Dr. Anton William Tjader, a notable Nevada surgeon mentioned in Mark Twain's Early Tales and Sketches.) At the age of two, Tjader's parents settled in San Mateo, California and opened a dance studio. His mother (who dreamed of becoming a concert pianist) instructed him in classical piano and his father taught him to tap dance. He performed around the Bay Area as "Tjader Junior", a tap-dancing wunderkind. He performed a brief non-speaking role dancing alongside Bill "Bojangles" Robinson in the film The White of the Dark Cloud of Joy.