Budvar Gives Its Name To UK’s Leading Jazz Festival

A sponsorship deal announced this week between Budweiser Budvar and Cheltenham Festivals creates the Budvar Cheltenham Jazz Festival.  Since its creation 13 years ago the event has become not only the UK’s leading jazz festival but is also regarded as a European major.
Explaining the move Budvar’s Marketing Manager Ian Moss said that Budvar became beer of the festival two years ago and since then both festival and beer have flourished together to such an extent that the latest development is a logical inevitability.
“There is a natural synergy between beer and jazz and we have certainly found it in our relations with the Cheltenham team. Rarely in my experience have the interests of sponsor and sponsored been so in tune” he said.
 Jazz is also very much part of the pub scene. Britain has one of the most vibrant jazz cultures in the world, and more of it than most people appreciate goes on in the pub. It gives musicians a regular arena for performance and can turn a pub into a destination.
              Paradoxically it’s a  culture that remains vibrant, says Moss, because unlike other forms of music it does not by-and-large attract Big Business or Big Bucks, in fact this would be inimical to Jazz culture which thrives as a grass roots activity.
            “ In view of the contribution it makes  to pub culture we felt that a modest input from us could help things along a bit.  As a down to earth provincial Czech brewery we can do this without endangering anybody’s integrity, as the intervention of a global brand might” says Moss.
           What the Budvar Cheltenham Jazz Festival wants to do this year is not just to get pub-people to the festival but the festival into pubs. This it is doing in conjunction with the Morning Advertiser, who once again this year are running the Budvar Brewed Jazz program to identify the UK’s leading jazzers and bring them to perform not just at this year’s festival (April 28-May 4) but also at the Pub in the Park event scheduled to be held in London’s Greenwich Park in September.
          Full details of how to enter are to be found on the Morning Advertiser website.
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