Jazz Leeds is a major UK volunteer run jazz promoter, based mainly at Seven Arts, a beautifully designed acoustic venue in Chapel Allerton, Leeds. It was started – as Seven Jazz – in 2007 by two local jazz fans Steve Crocker and Steve Ross. Steve Crocker previously promoted jazz in the 1980’s and 1990’s Sheffield including the noted “Jazz at the Leadmill” sessions, and was also a jazz radio presenter on Radio Hallam for many years.

JazzLeeds are constituted as a charitable music trust (since 2017). We now have a year round programme of over 120 concerts, jazz festivals, jam sessions, workshops and a community band. We promote a mixture of international, national and local musicians and a wide range of music – mainly contemporary jazz but also including some traditional jazz, blues, latin and big band performances as well. We have picked up a couple of awards on the way – the Jazz Yorkshire award for best Yorkshire jazz venue (2012) and the UK Parliamentary Jazz award for best UK jazz venue (2016).

Our programme includes

• Evening and Sunday afternoon concerts with international, national and regional jazz artists.
• Two jazz venues – Seven Arts (main venue) and Northlight (workshop venue with some concerts)
• Jazz Cafes – monthly jam session at Northlight where we encourage people to participate in music making.
• The annual Leeds Jazz Festival in May each year where we put participate through concerts at Seven Arts and hosting the Cookridge Street jazz stage in Leeds city centre on May bank holiday.
• Concerts at Seven Arts and hosting the Regent Street Jazz Sunday aftenoon stage in early September as part of the annual Chapel Allerton Arts Festival.
• Jazz Workshops for people who want to learn to play jazz and a jazz choir for singers.
• Work with Leeds schools. We  ran a pilot project with Roundhay School in autumn 2022 to help them start a Jazz Band and offer a taster day of music making to young people in the school who do not usually get involved in music. In 2023/4 we are also involving two more secondary schools in Leeds – at Allerton Grange and City of Leeds school in Woodhouse, to help encourage more jazz music tuition in schools.
• We acknowledge the financial support and assistance we receive from our partners – Leeds City Council through the LCC’s Culture Fund scheme, Leeds Conservatoire and Junior Conservatoire through our schools project, “Conservatoire Collection” concerts and making student tickets available for our evening events, the Leeds Jazz Festival organisation, especially the Cookridge Street jazz tent programme, Jazz North for funding young support bands at our concerts, and most recently the Mohn Westlake fund for helping fund our education projects. We also receive support from individuals who fund the concerts and events that we put on. In the past we have received funding from Jazz Yorkshire, Leeds Inspired, Northern Jazz Promoters, PRS, and Arts Council England.

• Jazz Leeds charity has a board of trustees including Ramesh Narayanan (our chair), Steve Crocker, Steve Ross, Rosemary Holmes, Karen Gourlay, Joe Allen, Hayley Harding and our student Trustee Sophie Speed. We have a large group of volunteer supporters who help us in running our events.

• We are always looking for help – just come to one of our gigs and offer!