Finally! The Nice Jazz Festival is returning to jazz. After an increasingly pop-rock-funk program the last five or six years, the new director, Gerard Drouot is returning the festival to its jazzy roots. Here’s a preview of the 2008 Jazz Festival that runs from July 19 through July 25.

• July 19: Archie Shepp, Avishai Cohen, Rufus Wainwright, Stacey Kent
• July 20: Ibrahim Maalouf, Barbara Hendricks, The Magnus Lindgren Quartet, Hocus Pocus, George Benson.
• July 21: Sanseverino, Stefano De Battista, Diana Krall
• July 22: Maria Schneider Orchestra, Leonard Cohen, Maceo Parker
• July 23: Nigel Kennedy, Jean-Luc Ponty, Return to Forever (Chick Corea, Stanley Clarke, Al Di Meola, Lenny White
• July 24: Hubert-Felix Thiefaine, Paul Personne, Michel Portal, San Francisco Jazz Collective, Alain Bashung
• July 25: Garry Burton Quartet with Pat Metheny, Steve Swallow, Antonio Sanchez, Johy Mayall and the Bluesbreakers, Yael Naim, AaRON
• July 26: Bonobo, Pink Martini, Craig Adams, Joan Baez

What a pleasure. OK, the tickets are a little more expensive than usual, ranging from €31 to €51 on “prestige nights” (such as the first concert by Leonard Cohen in 15 years) but this is a good thing. The last few years the concerts have been a crowded, miserable mess in which you spent more time dodging hyped-up toddlers than listening to the music.

As in previous years, the concerts will take place in the Arenes de Cimiez, the verdant hill with Roman ruins in east Nice.

Tickets are on sale now; see the Nice Jazz Festival site for more information.