“Over 10 jazz-packed summer days from July 6th to the 15th Birmingham will become Jazz City UK, with more jazz per square metre than has New Orleans.”

I personally always find the Malvern Hills most peaceful at this time of year.

But I have some real issues with this from the perspective of someone who wants to really promote and encourage the enjoyment of jazz music, and foster the sustainable careers of people who choose the difficult road of making it their livelihood.

First, it’s an odd jazz festival that doesn’t lead with some real drawcards.

I mean, there are some respected local players in there, but the strategy seems to be to put as much jazz in people’s way as possible so they cannot help but trip over it — rather than to entice audiences with some unmissable international and local jazz legends.

In fact, even of the half a dozen or so Birmingham and West Midlands absolute jazz icons that spring to mind — I can only find one or two of them on the list.

International Jazz Festivals should bring tourism. This one seems to just happen to be on. It’s great that all of these players are getting work this one time of the year, but this is hardly an audience-focused event, and nor will it lead to significant ongoing work for any of the performers.

Rather than bring an audience together to celebrate and enjoy jazz, the strategy here seems to be to collect as many jazz players together as they can, and then distribute them as widely across the city as possible in an attempt to give them their annual gig.

Cool posters aside, this has the air of an ad-hoc busker’s convention.

These things should be prestigious. Major events on the cultural calendar. Cheltenham should be the model.

Fewer dates. Fewer performances. Fewer, but bigger venues. Higher profile acts. Larger audiences. Higher ticket prices. More sense of occasion.

That’s the sort of thing that convinces people they like jazz enough to spend money on attending performances at other times of the year. Surely that’s the desirable outcome here?

And — Oh my God — “more jazz per square metre than New Orleans”?!! — whoever came up with that slogan should be shot.

Any jazz player with any sense of what goes on in the world, any dignity and any scrap of empathy should be at great pains to distance themselves from anything that claims anything as ignorant and offensive as that.

Nothing has damaged the livelihoods and careers of more jazz musicians in history than the catastrophic handling of Hurricane Katrina.

You know what? I think I’ve just talked myself into a boycott.