Jazz is Everywhere: mjf Youth Advisory Board takeover

mjf @ First Street (Ask Garden Stage)

mjf’s Youth Advisory Board (YAB) presents Jazz is Everywhere: expect the unexpected, jazz fusions and plenty of audience participation.

Jazz is Everywhere is an event curated and presented from start to finish by our YAB team of young people, who have aspired with this event to represent the future of jazz in the North.

Our YAB are a committed and enthusiastic group of 18–25 year-olds who have been recruited from open application. The group helps advise mjf and its programme on what they feel are the important considerations for the emergent generation. At the same time, they learn about the roles and responsibilities of running a live music event and organisation: roles that might be available to young professionals wishing to enter the music sector.

This year, we set them a task: to create a festival event for the Garden Stage programme at mjf2026 that reflects what they want to see.

From curating programme ideas, organising their roles, working with budgets, contracts, planning, production and marketing, this event is the culmination of those efforts. Come down to check out what they’ve produced!

Any young people interested in joining the YAB, the next recruitment round will open during mjf2026 and sign up will be available at the link here.

Introducing Scratchy Junk Show

Herbie Underwood drums / Alex FB dj / Joe Frost piano / Tom McEwen guitar / Toby Freeman bass

Leeds-based jazz drummer and DJ Herbie Underwood unveils the ‘Scratchy Junk Show’, a fusion of Jazz, Funk and Hip-Hop featuring an all-star lineup of local musicians and Alex FB on the the wheels of steel.

Groove along to this dynamic duo as they prove that jazz is truly genre-fusing (and everywhere!)