Jazz musicians and Le Grand Depart

Singers, artists and performers joined forces at the Trinity Leeds shopping centre to perform the theme song for the first ever Yorkshire Festival, as the programme of events for the landmark 100-day arts celebration was announced for Le Grand Depart - the start of this year's Tour De France in Yorkshire. A carnival snail, woolly bikes, choirs and brass bands emerged from the centre’s shops to join band Hope & Social in blasting out ‘The Big Wide’ to a growing crowd of interested shoppers.

Not strictly jazz maybe but there are jazz musicians involved in the winning submissions - trumpeter James Hamilton, the driving force behind Hope and Social also recently won the Jazz Yorkshire's award for writing a Yorkshire Jazz Suite. Jazz singer Louise Gibbs has been commissioned to help local communities in Yorkshire write their own songs, in Le Grand Depart "Songwriter Relay"

Gary Verity, chief executive of Welcome to Yorkshire, said: “The Yorkshire Festival 2014 will be a county-wide celebration of arts and culture, creating excitement and anticipation in the 100 days before the greatest free sporting show on the planet arrives in Yorkshire.”

For information and listings visit www.yorkshirefestival.co.uk.