According to Montreal reporter Sun Ping, the annual Montreal International Jazz Festival is about to open on the night of June 26 in the Arts Centre (Place Des Arts), Montreal. Having a reputation as 'the best jazz festival', the Montreal International Jazz Festival has gone through twenty-eight glorious years and this year is the 29th session.

This Jazz Festival will last from June 26 until July 6. According to the organizer, the festival will attract 3,000 artists from 30 countries to perform on the stage. By then about 400 reporters will be at the scene for interviews. During the music festival, ten open-air theatres and ten indoor concert halls will be created. There will be 650 performances, of which 450 are for free. At the same time, 2.5 million viewers will be present in the music festival, of which 30 percent are the tourists.

Background:
In 1978, a fanatical music lover in Canada called Alain Simard submitted an application to the government, based on his dream of gathering all America's best jazz musicians in Montreal. It was not until 1980 that the 1^st Montreal Jazz Festival started, with the support of grants from many parties.

Montreal Jazz Festival is a non-profit organization. Its difference from most other music festivals is that most of the music performances in the Montreal Jazz Festival are free.

For the past twenty years, gradually transcended from the pure meaning of the music performances, the Montreal Jazz Festival becomes a huge stage for music exchange and one of Canada's most influential international events. After entering the 21st century, the annual Montreal Jazz Festival will invite more than 2,000 well-known musicians to present a colorful feast of music. It also will attract more than 1.5 million fans to come.

In 2001, the Montreal Jazz Festival was rated as one of the fifteen most important major events in Quebec, Canada. The readers of Jazztime Magazine regarded as 'the best jazz festival'.