Anyone who seriously thought I wasn't going to spend this week raving about the Jazz Festival obviously hasn't read the column much.
Because it deserves a good rave: the 48th National Jazz Festival has achieved the size and quality of a true international jazz festival.

Looking back over the past decade and a half – since the mid-90s, when the Jazz Society in Tauranga started what now looks like an inspired rebuilding of the event – it now becomes clear that the 'All Kiwi” model adopted then, which transformed the festival from a relatively small gathering at the Bureta Park Motor Inn into a huge musical celebration which swamped downtown Tauranga, was just a transitional stage.
Back at the 40th festival, the informal slogan was 'The Best Kiwi Jazz in the World” and that pride in presenting the pinnacle of what New Zealand had to offer firmly established the festival in the minds of New Zealand jazz players and audiences, surfing on the wave of new-found homegrown self-esteem that came along with a fresh, more arts-focused Labour government, The Lord of the Rings successes, and a lease on life for popular local music as commercial radio finally embraced the idea of playing Kiwi music.
The landscape has changed now and, even less than a decade later, we take the chart success of New Zealand artists as a matter of course. The days when even the country's top bands strained for radio play are becoming a distant memory.
And so it is with the National Jazz Festival.
As I walked through the Village this year and downtown along The Strand, saw the train streaming past and the riverboat out on the harbour, and joined the queues for Baycourt concerts, it felt like something had changed.
And it wasn't just the audience numbers.
Certainly it was packed. I think the final figures will say that something like 60,000 people attended the festival, which is remarkable in itself. There were also nearly 500 musicians here in one capacity or another, making it – as I have mentioned before – pretty much the single biggest annual gathering of musicians anywhere in this country. It is almost redundant to point out the massive good this must do for the Tauranga economy.
But it was more than that.
I went along to the Monday night concert at Baycourt and saw a finale which consisted of Dr John and his band joyfully jamming with Brian Auger and his band. Here, in Tauranga. Two people who are without any hesitation known as international musical legends were sitting back to back making music together, and when Dr John waded his way off stage after the encore his band stayed right there with Brian Auger and played another tune, the whole ensemble grinning like Cheshire cats, high on the sheer exuberance and pleasure of playing music.
It was a magical moment. It was the sort of thing that you hear about happening at Montreux or some other big international festival. And it was happening here, in Tauranga.
The Montreux Jazz Festival started in 1967, making it – like most jazz festivals – a bit younger than New Zealand's National Jazz Festival. And it is a staggering achievement for the organisers here that, as the festival approaches its 50th anniversary, it is truly reaching international status.
So it would be remiss to end this column any other way than by acknowledging the two people who have led the team on this extraordinary bash, Festival Director Arne Herrmann and Artistic Director Liam Ryan. Under their guidance, the festival is moving from being – and I feel quite secure calling it this – the best jazz festival in New Zealand to becoming a genuinely iconic event that can proudly take its place on the international stage. Their vision and dedication is what is making this possible.
But they couldn't have done it without a pile of help. The festival is still staffed mainly by volunteers from the Tauranga Jazz Society, the organisation that created the event in the first place. In a very real sense, this festival is their gift to the people of Tauranga. They deserve our thanks.