The festival bands perform on eight stages. The eighth opens up a different way of connecting with the Dresden audience: the Piazza am Taschenberg becomes an Open Stage. Students can apply for a slot just as professionals can. In addition to the invited bands, the Jazzmeile also gives a platform to musicians whose path into the programme runs through their own application.

The Open Stage is not set apart from the festival action, but right in the middle of the route. A detour to the Piazza is just as much part of the musical stroll as meeting one of the invited bands. The routes through the city centre connect both sides of the programme. Listen a little longer one moment, move on the next: the Jazzmeile does not call for any fixed order.

From the Kuppelhalle of Hauptbahnhof, the route leads via the stages at the Hotels Newa and Lilienstein into the Old Town to the stage on Schlossplatz. At the Frühjahrsmarkt on Altmarkt, jazz is part of the action among the market stalls. Schlossplatz is another stop. There are also the Brassband-Points at Hotel Königstein and on Neumarkt. With the Open Stage at the Piazza am Taschenberg, there are eight stages in all, all freely accessible.

The Brassband-Points carry a reminder in their name: in New Orleans, brass bands were part of parades, celebrations and funeral processions. Music in the open air and in the midst of urban life was an important starting point for early jazz. The Jazzmeile picks up on that closeness. Between the stages lies no enclosed festival area, but the city centre with its footpaths and squares.

You can turn it into a walking tour, or just as well into a long encounter with a single band. The various forms of Traditional Jazz provide the common framework for the invited festival bands. The Open Stage broadens that framework by giving musicians the chance to introduce themselves to the Dresden audience. Because all venues are freely accessible, the paths between these encounters remain open. Dresdner Jazzmeile is supported by WT Energiesysteme GmbH.

No festival finale would be complete without the Dixieland-Parade – and this image stays with you: up to two dozen floats, hundreds of participants, tens of thousands of spectators lining the parade route from the starting point at the former Carola-Brücke along the Terrassenufer through the historic city centre.

The Dixieland-Parade is Traditional Jazz in its liveliest, most authentic form, because jazz was literally born in the street, and the marching-band legacy emerged from the funeral processions and festive parades of early 20th-century New Orleans. Anyone standing along the route today and hearing the sound of a Brassband approaching experiences a direct echo of that history. And anyone fortunate enough to look down from Brühlsche Terrasse onto Terrassenufer sees the panorama of this parade against the backdrop of the Dresden Old Town.

The parade belongs to the city and to everyone in it.