ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the fieldwork at the 2010 Montreal, Vancouver and Toronto jazz festivals, together with numerous interviews with audience members, musicians, festival representatives and representatives from TD Bank. It traces the history of jazz festivals in Canada and outlines the process through which TD took over the title sponsorship and began to position itself as Canada's Bank of Music. It also focuses more specifically on the TD Bank itself, examining the Bank's intertwined motivations for taking on the jazz festival sponsorship: its comfort brand positioning, engaging with local communities, promoting diversity, and supporting artistic excellence. The iconic Chicago School economist Milton Friedman famously dismissed Corporate Social Responsibility as a marketing cloak, a duplicitous usage of the rhetoric of environmentalism or social activism to frame corporate activities in order to gain a market advantage. The chapter examines the Bank's intertwined motivations for taking on the jazz festival sponsorship: its comfort brand positioning, engaging with local communities and promoting diversity.
