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Austria's Snow Jazz Festival hosts concerts in hotels, clubs, and ski huts. |
Destinations
60s Magical Music Tour
MANCHESTER, England March 8, 15 Manchester's Urbis center revisits the city's musical halcyon days with a club crawl of the locations where tight-suited and miniskirted teens once frolicked and shimmied along with the sounds of Lulu and Tom Jones. The tour makes the circuit where the Small Faces, Chuck Berry, Jimi Hendrix, Ike and Tina Turner, and the Bay City Rollers (!) all played. It also visits celebrated hot spots where the city's Northern Soul scene was born. It's a morning tour, so you won't catch any live performances, but load your iPod with the Hollies and experience the ghosts of night life past. The tour is $8.
Urbis, Cathedral Gardens, Manchester, 011-44-161-605-8200, urbis.org.uk.
Mosaic Music Festival
SINGAPORE March 7-16
For adventurous souls with wide-ranging tastes, this festival resembles a mash-up of jazz, art rock, world music, and pop, all condensed into just over a week of live performances. Headliners include Harry Connick Jr., Kurt Elling, Broken Social Scene, Mum, Sondre Lerche, and the Bird and the Bee. The festival is also a forum for developing artists who perform for free in smaller venues of the massive Esplanade arts complex. Tickets are sold individually and prices range up to $180.
The Esplanade, Esplanade Drive, Singapore, 011-65-6828-8377, mosaicmu sicfestival.com.
Nice Carnival
NICE, France Feb. 16-March 2
The legendary Riviera party celebrates the Year of the Rat with a flower parade, a parade of lights, and a sexy Carnival parade. The parties are divided into family-friendly activities during the day, while evenings are given over to adult debauchery such as live music, DJs performances, and other unfit-for-print activities. All this fun doesn't come cheap. Reserved seating for parades is $37 (kids are free).
Ultra Music Festival
MIAMI March 28-29 Electronic music festivals in this country are about as common as gossip columns without Britney Spears, with this exception. The annual late spring party is a mammoth collection of top shelf DJs spinning al fresco for bikini-clad club kids at the end of spring break. This year's festival includes sets from vinyl heavyweights Carl Cox, Tiesto, Paul Van Dyk, Sasha & Digweed, Layo & Bushwacka!, BT, Richie Hawtin, and pretty much every DJ who has ever graced the cover of DJ Times. General admission to the two-day festival is $129, or live large as a VIP for $350.
Snow Jazz Festival
BAD GASTEIN, Austria March 7-16
Hoping to lure end-of-the-season skiers to the Austrian hills, ski resort town Bad Gastein hosts nearly two dozen jazz concerts in hotels, clubs, and ski huts throughout the high altitude hamlet. The talent isn't exactly internationally known (Trio Nada, anyone?), but think of the festival as the sweet icing on a lovely time spent swooshing and shopping in the beautiful spa town.
jazz-im-saegewerk.org (German website), 011-43-6432-6164.
Events are sometimes canceled, rescheduled, or sold out; call or check online to confirm. Christopher Muther can be reached at muther@globe.com.
© Copyright 2008 Globe Newspaper Company.
