Apr 21, 2026 12:52 PM
Amalie Dahl’s Dafnie EXTENDED
Live At Moldejazz (Sonic Transmissions), the impressive, assured and heady debut album from Danish reedist and composer…
“Music is something to share and I have always felt that you cannot sit and wait for things to happen,” says Amalie Dahl.
Apr 21, 2026 12:52 PM
Live At Moldejazz (Sonic Transmissions), the impressive, assured and heady debut album from Danish reedist and composer…
While much free-jazz remains well off the beaten path, its adherents are more passionate and obsessive than ever.
Feb 17, 2026 1:41 PM
Original issues of most of the rugged recordings featured in the new coffee table book Now Jazz Now: 100 Essential Free…
This year’s Jazz em Agosto set by the Darius Jones Trio captured the titular alto saxophonist at his most ferocious.
Aug 26, 2025 2:38 PM
The organizers of Lisbon, Portugal’s Jazz em Agosto Festival assume its audience is thoughtful and independent. Over…
“With jazz I thought it must be OK to be Black, for the first time,” says singer Sofia Jernberg.
Jan 2, 2025 11:50 AM
On Musho (Intakt), her recent duo album with pianist Alexander Hawkins, singer Sofia Jernberg interprets traditional…
As part of Bimhuis’ October program, pianist Marta Warelis, right, debuted a sextet featuring cornetist Ben LaMar Gay, reedists Ab Baars and Karen Ng, and others.
Oct 22, 2024 10:50 AM
While some international jazz venues have been in continuous operation longer than the Bimhuis in Amsterdam, it’s…
Mats Gustafsson at this year’s edition of Jazzfest Saalfelden in Saalfelden, Austria.
Oct 8, 2024 10:01 AM
The best jazz festivals in the world tend to construct a kind of temporary community each year, not only bringing…
Wim Wabbes, outgoing European Jazz Network president, makes a point during an opening day session of the ENJ conference in Ghent, Belgium.
Sep 24, 2024 1:39 PM
Each year programmers and representatives of most of Europe’s most prestigious and important jazz festivals, clubs…
“I’m not going to reinvent the wheel, but maybe I can reinvent things for myself,” says Paal Nilssen-Love.
Sep 26, 2023 1:10 PM
On the evening of Saturday, March 25, Norwegian drummer Paal Nilssen-Love was sitting on the stage of the respected…
The European trio Ghosted played a hypnotic set on Aug. 3 at Portugal’s Jazz em Agosto.
Sep 6, 2023 1:07 PM
There’s a predictable homogeneity to many of the jazz festivals that take place over the course of the hot European…
Rempis started his Aerophonic Records label in 2013.
Feb 21, 2023 12:08 PM
Although he operates in a musical milieu that treasures spontaneity, agility and invention as much as anything else,…
Vasil Hajigrudev and Hristina Beleva perform as a duo during the European Jazz Network’s September gathering in Sofia, Bulgaria.
Oct 5, 2022 9:40 AM
Every year members and guests of the European Jazz Network, which was formed in 1987, gather in a new city on the…
Drummer Gard Nilssen, this year’s artist-in-residence, performs at Jazzfestival Saalfelden with his trio Acoustic Unity.
Sep 7, 2022 12:47 PM
The organizers of the 42nd edition of Jazzfestival Saalfelden hoped to return to the event’s previous glories after…
The trio Acoustic Unity is among the groups slated to perform at Jazz Festival Saalfelden in Austria.
Aug 16, 2022 1:54 PM
Jazz Festival Saalfelden, the revered Austrian event that occurs each summer in the titular locale nestled within the…
Jul 19, 2022 2:16 PM
On Nov. 7, 1966, a 31-year-old Swiss fan of cutting-edge jazz made the short trip from his home in Basel across the…
Harpist Alina Bzhezhinska, one of 15 European artists DownBeat critics selected as must-hear music.
Jul 12, 2022 2:56 PM
Many of us at DownBeat have found ourselves stuck at home lately, wondering what’s happening elsewhere — especially…
Kirke Kardja performs as a member of the Karja-Renard-Wandinger Trio at EJN.
Oct 12, 2021 11:24 AM
Perhaps no musical tradition is more invested in direct interaction and spontaneous give-and-take than jazz, practices…
Julius Hemphill rehearsing Long Tongues: A Saxophone Opera in 1990
Mar 25, 2021 11:34 AM
Considering the seemingly boundless spring of archival music collections in the marketplace, it’s surprising that so…
Guitarist Ruben Machtelinckx formed the Aspen Edities imprint in 2017 alongside euphonium player Niels Van Heertum and writer Sanne Huysmans
Sep 24, 2020 1:53 PM
Last winter, at the Brand Festival in the quaint Belgian city of Mechelen, guitarist and improviser Ruben Machtelinckx…
Devonté Hynes, of Blood Orange fame, collaborated with Chicago’s Third Coast Percussion (shown here) on Fields.
Mar 20, 2020 12:09 PM
Berlin-based composer Joanna Bailie delivers work that masterfully collides field recordings, spoken word and old music…
Pianist Pat Thomas recently has enjoyed some serious momentum.
Jan 10, 2021 7:23 PM
Keyboardist and improviser Pat Thomas, 59, has been a prolific polymath on the U.K. jazz and improv scene for four…
The prolific Paal Nilssen-Love runs his own label, PNL Records.
Feb 26, 2020 9:46 AM
A few years ago, the Norwegian drummer Paal Nilssen-Love—a former member of groups like Atomic, The Thing and the…
Nils Økland, who performs in Lumen Drones, has released a handful of recordings in various settings through Hubro, a label based in Oslo, Norway.
Jan 22, 2020 9:10 AM
Andreas Risanger Meland chose to celebrate the 10th anniversary of his label, Hubro, with a touring European showcase…
Trumpeter Tomasz Dabrowski is a musician eager to challenge himself with shifting contexts and self-imposed limitations.
Dec 16, 2019 1:11 PM
Adversity has been a steady motivator in the career of Polish trumpeter Tomasz Dabrowski, starting with his early…
Drummer Gerald Cleaver works with some of today’s most fearless musicians.
Jan 3, 2020 1:25 PM
Drummer Gerald Cleaver unfairly has been pigeonholed as a free-jazz player for much of his career, though his efforts…
Makaya McCraven performs at the Jazztopad Festival in Wroclaw, Poland, on Nov. 17.
Dec 1, 2019 5:38 PM
With so many annual jazz festivals filling the music calendar across Europe, it takes savvy programming to make such…
Saxophonist Art Pepper (right) recorded with bassist Charlie Haden during 1979 sessions in Los Angeles. The material has been anthologized on Promise Kept: The Complete Artists House Recordings, a five-disc set.
Sep 29, 2020 3:48 PM
In 1977 alto saxophonist Art Pepper told New York Times critic John S. Wilson, “In a very short time I’ll be like…
Seeing a Charles Lloyd performance changed the trajectory of Maria Faust’s creative life.
Oct 15, 2019 9:36 AM
Growing up in remote Kuressaare, a small island village in Communist Estonia, saxophonist and composer Maria Faust had…
Multi-instrumentalist Matthias Schriefl makes a big impression during a collaboration with the hr-Bigband at the 2018 Deutsches Jazzfestival Frankfurt in Germany.
Oct 11, 2019 2:19 PM
The history of jazz in Germany includes one of the darkest chapters in human history: The Nazi regime of the 1930s was…
Saxophonist Hanna Paulsberg (left), vocalist Rohey Taalah and bassist Ellen Andrea Wang perform as Gurls during A l’arme! Festival, which ran July 31-Aug. 3 in Berlin.
Sep 5, 2019 10:31 AM
From its very beginnings jazz has functioned like a stylistic blob, driven by its practitioners to absorb, assimilate…
In 2011, Fabrizio Spera and a couple of colleagues opened the Blutopia record shop in Rome’s Pigneto neighborhood.
Aug 6, 2019 9:22 AM
“For me, as well as for many other people of my age, a record store has always represented a meeting place, where…
Philadelphia’s Sounds Of Liberation
Jul 4, 2019 9:38 AM
Pianist Jack Wilson unfortunately is known better for his famous protégé, vibist Roy Ayers—whom he first met when…
John Zorn performs his Hermetic Organ piece earlier in June at Jazz Festival Ljubljana, an event that unspooled 14 sets of the composer’s Bagatelles rendered by various New York musicians.
Jun 27, 2019 11:12 AM
Jazz Festival Ljubljana owns the distinction of being Europe’s oldest continuously run jazz festival—originally…
Pianist Simon Nabatov has released dozens of albums on Leo.
Jun 5, 2019 6:27 PM
Leo Feigin brought lots of passion but little music-industry experience to the job when he launched his namesake label…
“From as early as I can remember, I’ve been experimenting with how many different sounds you can get out of a piano,” Elliot Galvin said.
Apr 12, 2019 9:28 AM
London keyboardist Elliot Galvin is a musician of implacable, nonchalant curiosity. Since emerging at the start of this…
While jazz has been a common thread, the work of Danish guitarist Mark Solborg’s has veered well outside any clear parameters.
Mar 13, 2019 9:29 AM
Danish guitarist Mark Solborg has been a ubiquitous presence on Copenhagen’s creative music scene for two decades,…
Anthony Braxton performs at the Edition Festival, which ran Feb. 7–10 in Stockholm.
Feb 28, 2019 10:50 AM
The centerpieces for the fourth iteration of Stockholm’s Edition Festival were two performances devoted to the music…
A very relaxed Christian Meaas Svendsen with members of Nakama
Feb 6, 2019 9:26 AM
In his recent improvisational practice, Norwegian bassist Christian Meaas Svendsen embraces a deeply physical…
Guitarist Hedvig Mollestad (center) said her band doesn’t think in terms of “jazz or rock.”
Jan 29, 2019 9:33 AM
Norwegian guitarist Hedvig Mollestad learned music through a jazz lens. Her father, Lars Martin Thomassen, was a…
Rodrigo Amado (right) recently issued History Of Nothing (Trost).
Dec 12, 2018 9:31 AM
Portuguese saxophonist Rodrigo Amado prides himself on the fact that all of the music made under his leadership has…
Lisa Ullén recently released a 3-album set, Piano Works (Disorder).
Aug 13, 2018 9:11 AM
Many musicians cite specific individuals as key influences, but for Swedish pianist Lisa Ullén, a particular community…
Bassist Greg Cohen (from left), trumpeter Dave Douglas, drummer Joey Baron and saxophonist John Zorn perform as Masada at Jazz Em Agosto in Lisbon, Portugal.
Aug 13, 2018 11:35 AM
This annual festival in Lisbon, Portugal, long programmed by Rui Neves, consistently has offered one of Europe’s most…
En Corps performs at the Kongsberg Jazz Festival in Kongsberg, Norway.
Jul 24, 2018 10:23 AM
The generous support the Norwegian state funnels into the arts long has reaped palpable benefits. For a country that is…
On Kuba Więcek’s debut, Another Raindrop, listeners can find influences as far flung as the trip-hop feel of Massive Attack and folkloric dance rhythms.
Jun 27, 2018 10:08 AM
In May 2015, Warner Music Group acquired the massive catalog of Polskie Nagrania, the old state-run Polish label of the…
Pianist Monica Dominique is featured on a box set that anthologizes Swedish jazz between 1970 and 1979.
Jun 26, 2018 9:23 AM
Two decades ago, the Swedish state-run label Caprice Records launched a remarkably inclusive series intended to…
Saxophonist Philipp Gropper works in many disparate contexts, playing in bands led by vibrant German musicians, including bassist Pablo Held and fellow saxophonist Wanja Slavin, in addition to co-leading the electro-acoustic foursome Tau.
Apr 5, 2018 10:33 AM
Few cities in Europe today are more cosmopolitan than Berlin.
During the past few decades, the city has attracted a…
Pianist Jason Moran and percussionist Milford Graves perform as a duo during the Big Ears Festival, which ran March 22–25 in Knoxville, Tennessee.
Apr 10, 2018 5:40 PM
With every annual installment, the Big Ears Festival feels more and more like several festivals under a single banner.…
Guitarist Raphael Roginski has performed as a solo artist, in duos and in numerous ensembles.
Oct 31, 2017 4:36 PM
Polish guitarist Raphael Roginski discusses creativity with the same type of idiosyncratic, poetic aesthetic informs…
Roscoe Mitchell of the Art Ensemble of Chicago performs during the Kongsberg Jazz Festival in Oslo, Norway, on July 7.
Jul 21, 2018 10:46 AM
The Kongsberg Jazz Festival, held every summer in an otherwise sleepy silver mining town about 90 minutes from Oslo,…
Willem Breuker (1944-2010)
May 24, 2017 10:00 PM
The composer, bandleader and reedist Willem Breuker, who died in July 2010 at the age of 65, is often omitted from…
Patrons shop for records at Chicago’s Dusty Groove.
Apr 22, 2017 8:49 AM
Record producer Zev Feldman is a bona fide jazz zealot, a man who brings a messianic glee to his desire to spread the…
Saxophonist Phillip Gropper is an integral part of WhyPlayJazz’s musical roster.
Apr 20, 2017 1:04 PM
Berlin is one of Europe’s most creatively potent melting pots, an artistic magnet that brings dynamic figures from…
Camila Meza (left), Ryan Keberle and Scott Robinson perform in Seattle as part of the Earshot Jazz Festival on March 13
Jun 21, 2019 9:40 AM
Trombonist and bandleader Ryan Keberle brought his sharp, eloquent band Catharsis to Chicago on March 17, concluding a…
Vocalist Sofia Jernberg was among the participants at this year’s October Meeting at the Bimhuis in Amsterdam, which ran from Oct. 7–9.
Oct 18, 2016 2:09 PM
Amsterdam’s Bimhuis stands out among international jazz venues for plenty of reasons, but one of the most important…
Marc Ribot (left) and Joe Henry perform at the Big Ears Festival in Knoxville, Tennessee, on April 1.
Apr 21, 2016 2:42 PM
One of the hallmarks of the annual Big Ears Festival, held each spring in Knoxville, Tennessee, is collaboration. This…
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