The Théâtre de Verdure sits in a fold of the Jardins Albert 1er, close enough to the Promenade des Anglais that on still evenings you can hear the Mediterranean between sets. It is an outdoor amphitheatre in the old sense — stone, greenery, the sky as a ceiling — and it has hosted the Nice Jazz Festival since the event's earliest decades. When the light drops behind the Alpes-Maritimes and the stage lamps take over, the place earns every one of its summer-night clichés without trying.
On 23 July 2026, that stage belongs to Gotts Street Park. The Leeds-formed trio — Josh Crocker on bass and production, Tom Henry on keyboards, Joe Harris on guitar — has built a reputation for a sound that sits at the intersection of vintage soul and alt-R&B, music that is warm in texture but precise in construction. Their set is part of the Nice Jazz Festival programme, one of the longest-running and most respected jazz and popular music events on the French Riviera, held each summer in the city's historic open-air venues.
A Sound Forged in Leeds
Gotts Street Park takes its name from a street in Leeds, and the city's character — industrious, a little unshowy, quietly confident — seems to have shaped how the three musicians work. Crocker, Henry and Harris are a production unit as much as a live band: their recordings are layered and considered, drawing on the American soul tradition of the 1970s while filtering it through a distinctly contemporary British sensibility. The result is music that rewards close listening without demanding it, which makes it well suited to an outdoor festival setting where the audience arrives with varying degrees of attention.
Vintage soul and alt-R&B are broad categories, but in Gotts Street Park's hands they describe something specific: bass lines that anchor rather than show off, keyboard textures that recall classic studio records, guitar work that colours without cluttering. Live, that balance shifts — the trio has room to extend, to let a groove breathe — and that is where a venue like the Théâtre de Verdure becomes part of the performance rather than merely its container.
The Festival, the Venue, the City
The Nice Jazz Festival has been drawing international artists to the Côte d'Azur for decades. It is one of the oldest jazz festivals in Europe, and while its programming has always moved with the times — embracing soul, funk, R&B and electronic music alongside more traditional jazz — it has kept a commitment to the open-air format that gives it much of its identity. The Théâtre de Verdure, with its natural acoustic and its position within a public garden, is the kind of venue that reminds you why outdoor concerts exist.
Nice itself is a city of pronounced contrasts: the baroque excess of the Vieille Ville, the wide rational geometry of the 19th-century seafront, the Italian inflections in the dialect and the cooking. In July, when the light is long and the terrace restaurants fill early, the city is at its most itself. A concert at the Théâtre de Verdure becomes one moment in a longer evening — aperitivo somewhere near the Cours Saleya, the walk along the Promenade, the music, then the walk back through warm air.
'Formé à Leeds par Josh Crocker, Tom Henry et Joe Harris, le trio s'est forgé un son unique ancré dans la soul vintage et l'alt-R&B.' — Nice Jazz Festival
For those coming from outside Nice, the festival's official site at nicejazzfest.fr carries the full programme and ticketing information. The Théâtre de Verdure is at the eastern end of the Jardins Albert 1er, a short walk from the tram and easily reached on foot from most of the city centre. Arriving before the set begins is worth it: the garden in the early evening, before the crowd has fully settled, has its own particular quality of light.
Gotts Street Park is the kind of act the Nice Jazz Festival does well — not a household name in France, perhaps, but exactly the sort of discovery that a well-curated festival makes possible. Leeds to the Riviera is a longer journey than it sounds. The music, by all accounts, makes it worth the distance.