Oct 22, 2024 10:50 AM
Lineup for Bimhuis’ 50th Reflects Historic Venue’s Sense of Variety
While some international jazz venues have been in continuous operation longer than the Bimhuis in Amsterdam, it’s…
Oct 22, 2024 10:50 AM
While some international jazz venues have been in continuous operation longer than the Bimhuis in Amsterdam, it’s…
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…
Sep 24, 2024 1:39 PM
Each year programmers and representatives of most of Europe’s most prestigious and important jazz festivals, clubs…
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…
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…
Feb 21, 2023 12:08 PM
Although he operates in a musical milieu that treasures spontaneity, agility and invention as much as anything else,…
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…
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…
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…
Jul 12, 2022 2:56 PM
Many of us at DownBeat have found ourselves stuck at home lately, wondering what’s happening elsewhere — especially…
Oct 12, 2021 11:24 AM
Perhaps no musical tradition is more invested in direct interaction and spontaneous give-and-take than jazz, practices…
Mar 25, 2021 11:34 AM
Considering the seemingly boundless spring of archival music collections in the marketplace, it’s surprising that so…
Sep 24, 2020 1:53 PM
Last winter, at the Brand Festival in the quaint Belgian city of Mechelen, guitarist and improviser Ruben Machtelinckx…
Mar 20, 2020 12:09 PM
Berlin-based composer Joanna Bailie delivers work that masterfully collides field recordings, spoken word and old music…
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…
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…
Jan 22, 2020 9:10 AM
Andreas Risanger Meland chose to celebrate the 10th anniversary of his label, Hubro, with a touring European showcase…
Dec 16, 2019 1:11 PM
Adversity has been a steady motivator in the career of Polish trumpeter Tomasz Dabrowski, starting with his early…
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…
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…
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…
Oct 15, 2019 9:36 AM
Growing up in remote Kuressaare, a small island village in Communist Estonia, saxophonist and composer Maria Faust had…
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…
Sep 5, 2019 10:31 AM
From its very beginnings jazz has functioned like a stylistic blob, driven by its practitioners to absorb, assimilate…
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…
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…
Jun 27, 2019 11:12 AM
Jazz Festival Ljubljana owns the distinction of being Europe’s oldest continuously run jazz festival—originally…
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…
Apr 12, 2019 9:28 AM
London keyboardist Elliot Galvin is a musician of implacable, nonchalant curiosity. Since emerging at the start of this…
Mar 13, 2019 9:29 AM
Danish guitarist Mark Solborg has been a ubiquitous presence on Copenhagen’s creative music scene for two decades,…
Feb 28, 2019 10:50 AM
The centerpieces for the fourth iteration of Stockholm’s Edition Festival were two performances devoted to the music…
Feb 6, 2019 9:26 AM
In his recent improvisational practice, Norwegian bassist Christian Meaas Svendsen embraces a deeply physical…
Jan 29, 2019 9:33 AM
Norwegian guitarist Hedvig Mollestad learned music through a jazz lens. Her father, Lars Martin Thomassen, was a…
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…
Aug 13, 2018 9:11 AM
Many musicians cite specific individuals as key influences, but for Swedish pianist Lisa Ullén, a particular community…
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…
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…
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…
Jun 26, 2018 9:23 AM
Two decades ago, the Swedish state-run label Caprice Records launched a remarkably inclusive series intended to…
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…
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.…
Oct 31, 2017 4:36 PM
Polish guitarist Raphael Roginski discusses creativity with the same type of idiosyncratic, poetic aesthetic informs…
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,…
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…
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…
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…
Jun 21, 2019 9:40 AM
Trombonist and bandleader Ryan Keberle brought his sharp, eloquent band Catharsis to Chicago on March 17, concluding a…
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…
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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