National Jazz Festival

The National Jazz Festival is New Zealand's largest jazz music festival, run annually in Tauranga by the Tauranga Jazz Society across a packed programme of more than 30 events. Orbit Entertainment was engaged in Operations roles across the festival week, responsible for the on-site delivery of four key festival sites: the Downtown Festival, the Jazz Village at Historic Village, Jazz at the Mount in its debut year, and the Jazz Cafe after-hours venue.

Orbit's role was operational delivery, working under the direction of the festival director rather than across the planning phase. Coming into a large, already-planned festival and executing it cleanly across multiple simultaneous sites requires a capable, adaptable crew.

Bump-in involved overseeing the setup of six outdoor stages across the festival sites, alongside the collection, management, and installation of sponsorship assets across all locations. Orbit supplied a team of stage managers and site crew who worked across every venue throughout the festival week.

On event days, the Orbit crew assisted with artist movements to ensure performers arrived at stage on time, liaised with the production provider across all sites, and handled security deployment and communications. The team also stage managed indoor events at Baycourt Theatre, and operated a PA setup in the Jazz Cafe.

All four sites were ready and operational at their scheduled start times across every day of the festival. Noise levels across all outdoor sites remained consistently within the required thresholds throughout the run.