The Detroit International Jazz Festival was founded in 1980 by
Robert McCabe and the Detroit Renaissance. Along with the Detroit
Grand Prix and the International Freedom Festival, Jazz Fest was
intended to bring people into the city and to provide all segments
of the population with world-class entertainment. It quickly became
a Labor Day Weekend tradition at Hart Plaza, a city park along
the Detroit River designed by Isamu Noguchi and Shuji Sadao.
From 1980 to 1991, the festival flourished through a partnership
with the highly regarded international jazz festival in Montreux,
Switzerland, sharing performers and commissioned poster art. In
1991, the festival merged with Detroit’s Music Hall Center for
the Performing Arts, where it resided until September 2005.
In March 2005, Detroit philanthropist
and Mack Avenue Records Chairman Gretchen Carhartt Valade emerged
as a major sponsor of the festival. With additional support from
the Knight Foundation, the festival expanded programmatically and
physically. The new footprint, covering three blocks of Woodward
Avenue north to the newly developed Campus Martius Park, provided
two additional stages and more space for food vendors and other activities.
The result was record-breaking attendance and revitalization of the
festival.
In January 2006, Valade founded the Detroit International Jazz Festival Foundation,
which took over production and management of the festival. Valade also committed
$10 million to establish an endowment that would provide much-needed seed money
for festival operations.
