The 29th annual Edinburgh Jazz and Blues Festival has made an appropriately cool entrance, with its 2007 programme appearing unheralded on its website earlier this week.  This short, independent festival, running this year from Friday 27th July to Sunday 5th August, attracts a high quality line-up across the broad range of the musical style - and makes a highly civilized introduction to the Festival season before the madness of the Fringe begins.

Courtesy Edinburgh Jazz and Blues Festival

Making good use of its pre-Fringe timing, the Jazz and Blues Festival takes temporary possession of some of the city's best venues, including - as usual - George Square's antique Spiegeltent, the International Festival's Hub and the much-loved Queen's Hall.  The Royal Over-Seas League on Princes Street joins in this year, with a series of lunchtime concerts complementing its existing reputation for classical recitals on the Fringe.

Browsing and booking

The printed programme is being mailed out to previous customers, or if you haven't received one, you can browse it on their website.  The day-by-day layout of the website doesn't do a great job of expressing the breadth of what's on offer - so you might prefer to look at this PDF version, which has better booking information and a handy schedule summary on the last page. 

Booking is already open, and is run through the International Festival's Hub box office.  We'd suggest you use the excellent online system, which features detailed plans of all the venues and allows you to choose your specific seats; start at the Jazz and Blues Festival home page and follow the links from there.  You can also call the Hub on 0131 473 2000.

Don't wait too long before getting your bookings in - this is a popular festival and the big-name concerts, such as Humphrey Lyttelton's, are already selling well.  It's worth planning ahead, because there are also some decent deals for early booking - you'll get 10% off tickets for 5 different shows rising to 20% off if you book 15, but only if you seal the deal by 20th July.