Oct 8, 2024 10:01 AM
Jazzfest Saalfelden Presents Disparate Facets of World-Class Improvisers
The best jazz festivals in the world tend to construct a kind of temporary community each year, not only bringing…
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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