Set in Freizeipark Moers, a large public park on the outskirts Moers town in northern Germany, the Moers Festival is presented in what is thought to be the biggest circus tent in Europe. Comfortably seating 2,500 the big top, or Festivalzelt, is hired-in annually for the event by Moers Kultur GmbH and rises up like a huge medieval castle amid a village of tiny tents, which house some 10,000 to 15,000, campers, dotted around the festival field.

Now in its 37th year, this is the third successive festival produced by Reiner Michalke, the internationally respected boss of Cologne's Stadtgarten, one of the biggest jazz clubs in Europe, who has succeeded in reinvigorating the festival with new creative energy. One of his first moves on taking over was to drop the term "jazz" from the festival's title, so it became the Moers Festival as much to avoid arcane debates among the jazz police as to what is and what isn't jazz as to appeal to an audience beyond the normal jazz constituency (on the basis that labelling can exclude as many as it includes).

It's a strategy, in tandem with the festival's ambitious audience development program in schools and colleges, which seems to have worked -- resulting in a healthy proportion of young fans in the audience. I asked a group of five teenagers if they were enjoying the event. Yes, they nodded, they were. They were fascinated, they said, with styles of music they never knew existed. They were equally clear when I asked if they would have come if it was called a "jazz" festival. "No" was the unanimous response.