Written by This November, the Edinburgh Jazz & Blues Festival offers a fresh dimension for its audience: a digital concert series streaming exclusive performances throughout the month. Launching on November 1 at 10am, the online platform will make available ten specially recorded concerts featuring some of Scotland’s leading jazz and blues artists, including Harben Kay, Dave Milligan, and Modern Vikings, with content accessible until November 30 at 5pm.
This streaming initiative accompanies the festival’s rich live tradition, whose last edition in July 2025 featured over 130 events across Edinburgh’s iconic venues including the Famous Spiegeltent and the Festival Theatre, blending international headliners with a vibrant homegrown scene. The digital series carefully curates performances to highlight the depth and diversity of Scotland’s jazz and blues landscape, offering viewers a chance to engage with the music at their own pace and place, in effect a personal venue accessible worldwide.
Perhaps most poignantly, the digital programme pays tribute to Scottish pianist Brian Kellock, whose passing this year marked a profound loss in the community. His 2024 concert with trumpeter Enrico Tomasso is available for streaming alongside a film of the 2025 Edinburgh Festival Carnival, celebrating the city’s multicultural musical fabric.
Timmy Allan
The move towards streaming, whether live or later in a special digital program as is the case with Edinburgh, is part of a wider shift accelerating across the festival circuit, both within jazz and other genres. Festivals from Montreux Jazz to Glastonbury and beyond have embraced digital platforms, motivated by the opportunity to dramatically extend their audience reach beyond geographical limits. While live attendance remains the emotional core of festivals, the hybrid model offers a mechanism to engage new listeners who might otherwise be excluded by distance or circumstance.
Streaming can make the festival accessible to a much wider audience while maintaining the quality of the performances. It creates an opportunity for people who can’t attend in person to experience the concerts, without losing the connection to live music. This raises the question of whether streaming will become a standard part of festivals going forward or remain just one of several options. For the Edinburgh Jazz & Blues Festival, and indeed other festivals that are moving in this direction, the focus is on using streaming to enhance engagement, not replace the unique atmosphere of live shows.
Paul Harrison Trio
This practical approach reflects the festival’s commitment to evolution. Since it began in 1978 as a series of pub gigs, the Edinburgh Jazz & Blues Festival has grown into a major event spanning the city. Now it is expanding further into the digital space, inviting listeners worldwide to share in its vibrant musical life while preserving the close, authentic experience that defines jazz and blues.
For those who cannot travel to Edinburgh or who wish to revisit favourite performances, the streaming series acts as a musical companion through the autumn and early winter, filling the darker nights with the warmth of live jazz and blues. It is a fitting gesture from a festival that understands music as both a local treasure and a universal language—one that with a little technological help, can now be shared more broadly than ever before.
So, as mentioned above, this November, the Edinburgh Jazz & Blues Festival opens its archive to welcome a wider audience online. Among the highlights available for streaming is the Timmy Allan Quintet. Allan, seen as a rising Scottish jazz guitarist and winner of the 2024 BBC Radio Scotland Young Jazz Musician of the Year, was recorded at the St Bride’s Centre. This concert features Matthew Kilner on saxophone, Paul Harrison on piano, Ali Watson on bass, and Greg Irons on drums. The concert was recorded behind closed doors and is freely accessible until 5pm Sunday, November 30.
Another notable performance is Paul Harrison’s New Trio project, “Revisiting Köln at 50”. This tribute to Keith Jarrett’s landmark The Köln Concert interprets the piece fifty years after its release. The trio, comprising Paul Harrison on piano, Ewan Hastie on bass, and Stephen Henderson on drums, recorded their set at the St Bride’s Centre as part of the 2025 festival. The concert is live from November 1 and remains accessible free until the end of the month.
Modern Vikings
Drummer Stephen Henderson leads the Modern Vikings, a group inspired by Scottish and Scandinavian folk traditions blended with contemporary jazz energy. The lineup includes Konrad Wiszniewski on saxes, Fergus McCreadie on piano, David Bowden on bass, and Graeme Stephen on guitar, alongside Henderson on drums. This exclusive concert was recorded on July 15, 2025, at the St Bride’s Centre and will be available through the digital platform from November 1 to November 30.
These streams, alongside other offerings in the programme, allow a varied and dynamic showcase of Scotland’s contemporary jazz and blues talents to reach tablets, phones, and screens worldwide—an expanded stage for a festival grounded in both place and community.
More information can be found on the Edinburgh Jazz & Blues Festival website.
Last modified: October 24, 2025
