The Marlborough jazz festival becomes even more international this year with a definite “down under” influence with the community of Marlborough in New Zealand being represented for the first time.

Although there will be no performers from the antipodes there will be a New Zealand Bandstand in the Old Lion Court Yard in High Street and members of the Marlborough (NZ) Chamber of Commerce are taking over the empty greengrocer’s shop at 5 High Street for the weekend.

In the shop there will be free tasting of wines from three Marlborough wineries plus the chance to try out one of the region’s great delicacies, green-lipped mussels, plus NZ gin.

Landscape gardener Marion Dale, from Winterbourne Monkton, has assembled a collection of New Zealand plants to give both the shop and the bandstand a real down under feel.

Business consultant Deborah Pepler, who spends half her year in Marlborough NZ and the other half in Westbury, with her English husband, has been helping promote cultural and trade links between the two towns.

Mrs Pepler said: “We are working hard at getting better links established and we have brought over posters made by school children in New Zealand and a banner from the Marlborough (NZ) Rotary Club.”

To complete the international flavour of the jazz festival there will be an African bandstand in the Old Ropeworks in Kennet Place where a number of African bands will be playing.

Claire Perry, the MP for Devizes, will be launching the festival at 6pm tomorrow outside the Castle and Ball Hotel where St John’s School Brass Band will send out the first notes of the 2010 Marlborough International Jazz Festival.

Two of the newest rising stars of the international jazz world, pianist and singer Benet Mclean and singer Verona Chard, are among the 100 performers and bands taking part in the festival, which runs until Sunday.

Organiser Nick Fogg’s nun friend, Sister Assumpta, is once again praying for fine weather.

He said: “She’s on the case again. She does a pretty good job, praying to the Holy Infant of Prague for fine weather for the festival and, yes, the forecast is good, so you bask in the sunshine, never more than a couple of notes away from a note or two of music or a real ale – or in the case of the Marlborough NZ bandstand, a glass of the finest Cabinet Sauvignons.”

Meanwhile, drivers heading in and out of Marlborough on the main Swindon road can hardly miss the fact that the festival starts tomorrow because the words Jazz, Jazz, Jazz and All that Jazz have appeared in four-foot high letters on the grass bank at the edge of The Common.

Town council ground staff have mown the letters into the grass and then coloured them in with harmless dye.