Ljubljana Jazz Festival

Work In progress

Established in 1960, the international Ljubljana Jazz Festival is the oldest jazz festival in Europe and the central international jazz event in Slovenia. Throughout the decades, the festival has presented an impressive array of some of the most eminent jazz and improvising musicians from Europe, the USA and other parts of the Americas, Africa, Asia, and Australia. The heterogeneous and diffuse nature of jazz music today is reflected both in the festival's history and especially in the adventurous musical directions it currently display. This programme is complemented by an all year-long concert series Cankar Tuesday, where similar music is being presented on a weekly basis.

Many open air or interdisciplinary events accompany the main musical part of the festival programme, including street performances, residency programmes, a film programme centred on documentaries, round table and exhibitions of posters, jazz photography and other art works.

The festival is organised by Cankarjev dom, Cultural and Congress Centre and predominantly takes place in the various concert halls of the centre. While the other main location is the open-air venue Križanke, some events also take place at Klub Gromka and also on the streets of Ljubljana. In recent years the festival is for booking purposes cooperating with (Lent Festival.

Music programme

Though the programme is quite profiled in terms of what one can expect not to hear - and that is safe reiterations of a traditional jazz expression. Otherwise, new music may be a more apt term to describe a sizable part of Jazz festival Ljubljana's programme, featured alongside free and more mainstream jazz forms. The festival is not focused on big names – though they do stop by – but on presenting a combination of what is perceived as cutting edge, original or sometimes just historically important for the advetorous musical forms. Fresh collaborations and music premiers are appreciated, with these often coming in the traditional RTV Slovenia Big Band collaboration with a guest that hastill now featured the likes of Anthony Braxton, Terye rypadal, Lois Moholo Moholo, etc.

The year 2009 marked the 50th anniversary of the festival and brought bands such as Avishai Cohen, Roscoe Mitchell, Paquito D'Rivera, Louis Moholo, Keith Tippett, Hamilton de Holanda, Richard Galliano and a special three part evening with John Zorn and his fellow musicians. In the following years, the really big names that are presented in Križanke could include Pat Metheny, Maria João, John Scofield Hollowbody Band, Dee Dee Bridgewater, Neneh Cherry & The Thing, David Murray Infinity Quartet featuring Macy Gray, Sly & Robbie meet Nils Petter Molvaer, Gregory Porter and Diogo Nogueira.

Crowd-magnet as the names above may be, the equally important stuff are the less known but innovative and important musicians and bands like Vijay Iyer Trio, Anthony Joseph & The Spasm Band, Angles Octet, Chris Lightcap's Bigmouth,Farmers By Nature Peter Evans solo, various Nate Wooley's appereances, Adam Lane's Full Throttle Orchestra, Jaga Jazzist, Dans Dans and Fire! Orchestra.

Clean Feed collaboration

Since 2010, the festival co-curator is Pedro Costa from the Portuguese label Clean feed. Besides adding up his connections, he also arranges that the label releases albums recorded at the festival under the name Live in Ljubljana Jazz Series. Many Portuguese artists have been presented here through this collaboration andthe traffic goes both ways as well.

History

Festival began its life as the Yugoslavian Jazz Festival, but its history goes more back, to 1945 when RTV Slovenia Big Band was formed and played jazz - a practice that was soon quashed due to political reason until the late 1950s, when the climate changed and jazz musicians were more adventurous at pop festivals around Yugoslavia (the a bit later established popular music festival Slovenska popevka shared many of it composers, musicians and singers with the early years of the jazz festival). Anyhow,

For the first six years it took place in Bled adn especially in its first few years, it was more of a showcase for local musicians of Yugoslavia. Then in 1967 it moved to Ljubljana to Tivoli Hall and in 1970 finally found its traditional domicile in the attractive outdoor venue of Križanke. For the first two decades, the festival was organised by The Jazz Society Ljubljana with its conventional jazz milieu and close-tied connections with the institutionalised RTV Slovenia Big Band, bastion of Slovene jazz traditionalism.

In 1982 the organisation of the Ljubljana Jazz Festival was taken over from the local Jazz Society. Due to organisational problems and controversies about its music and artistic direction in the mid-1980s the festival was moved for two years to the then newly established Cankarjev dom, Cultural and Congress Centre, but Križanke remaind as its primary venue. Cankarjev dom became its regular organiser with relatively stable public funding in 1982. Not without resistance and public polemics the first enlarged programme council which also included younger jazz connoisseurs was the start of musical opening toward new jazz, various forms of improvised music, and new trends associated with or inspired by jazz.

This was the turning point of festival orientation till now, an orientation that was followed by appointments of various art directors with different "success", often publicly attacked from various interest groups, "jazz angles" and aesthetic positions.

=Jazz festival programme until 1981

The programme at first featured z obvezno rdečo nitjo, to je z nastopi državnih radijskih orkestrov iz večine tedanjih republiških središč and after a few years more and more american musicans - and even rock Jean Luc. A če je bil ljubljanski festival v tistem času po čem zares prepoznaven in pomemben, je bil to prav po omenjeni bogati ponudbi vzhodnoevropskih nastopov ter posledično po tem, ko je ponujal za tiste čase redko priložnost, da so se neposredno, na istem odru ter še bolj v zaodrju, srečevali jazzovski glasbeniki z Vzhoda in Zahoda.

In the 60s, some American bands Modern Jazz Quartet (US), Jean-Luc Ponty (FR, 1967) and even japanese scene Kimiki Kasai & Akira Tanaka (JP, 1969).Yet, the music was still very traditional: Albert Mangelsdorff Quintet (DE, 1962), Modern Jazz Quartet (US) & Laurindo Almeida (BR), Krzysztof Komeda Quintet (PL, 1965), Jean-Luc Ponty (FR, 1967), Martial Solal Trio (FR/CH, 1968), Memphis Slim (US, 1968), Kimiki Kasai & Akira Tanaka (JP, 1969),

The seventies brouight some looseing up of jazz conceptions and free jazz was amdited alongside the than very popular ecm jazz, jazz rock and the still regingin mainsteram jazz - - Nastopili so Ram Chandra Mistry iz Indije. Za to je poskrbel močan trojni zalogaj že takrat samosvojih Skandinavcev z norveškim duetom Karin Krog in Arild Andersen na čelu ter še eno srečanje z japonsko jazzovsko ustvarjalnostjo v izvedbi kvinteta trobentača Terumasa Hina. Predvsem pa je leto 1973 prineslo Ljubljani prvo srečanje z odprtim zvočnim in angažiranim pomenskim nabojem kakšnega izmed takrat ključnih afroameriških protagonistov. To je bil saksofonist Archie Shepp - Tega leta pa smo na festivalu prvič srečali tudi nekaj afriškega: nastopila je skupina Mombasa, po poreklu iz Kenije.

Bill Evans Trio (US/GB, 1972), Archie Shepp Quintet (US, 1973), Yosuke Yamashita Trio (JP, 1974), Odetta (US, 1974), Elvin Jones Quartet (US, 1975), Cecil Taylor Quintet (US, 1976), New Terje Rypdal Group (NL, 1977) - Elvin Jones s svojim kvartetom (1975), pa The Jazz Messengers bobnarja Arta Blackeyja in kvartet saksofonista Stana Getza (1976), Paul Bley (US, 1979), Airto Moreira Group (BR/US/JP, 1980), Pharoah Sanders Quartet (US, 1981)

=Jazz festival programme after 1982

The programme changed and started with new music. One of the most majestic concerts at Ljubljana Jazz Festival was given by Sun Ra Archestra in 1982 in the packed Križanke venue in front of a completely "musicated" crowd.

Steve Lacy & Mal Waldron (US, 1982), Sun Ra Archestra (US, 1982), Irene Schweizer (CH) – Rüdiger Carl (DE, 1982), Lester Bowie Ensemble (US, 1982), Willem Breuker Kollektief (NL, 1983), Keith Tippett – Peter Brötzmann Quartet (GB/DE/DD, 1984), Vienna Art Orchestra (conductor Matthias Rüegg: int., 1985), Anthony Braxton Quartet (US, 1985), Julius Hemphill Jah Band (US, 1985), Dudu Pukwana & Zila (GB/ZA, 1986), McCoy Tyner Trio (US, 1986), The Art Ensemble Of Chicago (US, 1987), Max Roach (US, 1988), Gilberto Gil (BR, 1988), Sergey Kuryokhin's Pop-Mekhanika Ensemble (SU, 1989), Henry Threadgill Sextet (US, 1989), Sony Sharrock Band (US, 1990), Steve Coleman’s Five Elements (US, 1990), Miles Davis (US, 1991), Don Byron Klezmer Orchestra (US, 1994),

A to leto je vanj odločno zakoračila Latinska Amerika (Eddie Palmieri Orchestra, Gilberto Gil & Ensemble).

astopa Milesa Davisa in Nusreta Fateha Alija Khana) t

This USA-centric programme added latin bands as well, and big names. Ray Barretto & New World Spirit Orchestra (US, 1994), Bill Frisell Group, Defunkt (US, 1996), Tito Puente & His Latin Jazz Ensemble (US, 1997), Muhal Richard Abrams Quartet (US, 2000), Zlatko Kaučič, (SI, 2000), Italian Instabile Orchestra (IT, 2001), David S. Ware Quartet, Marc Ribot y Los Cubanos Postizos (US, 2001), Peter Brötzmann "Chicago Tentet" (int., 2002), Femi Anikulapo – Kuti & The Positive Force (NG, 2002), Maya Homburger & Barry Guy (CH/GB, 2003), Jan Garbarek Group (NO, 2003), Ornette Coleman Quartet (US, 2004), Pat Metheny (US, 2004), Abdullah Ibrahim (SA, 2005), David Murray & The Gwo-Ka Masters (US/GP, 2006), Alexander von Schlippenbach & Die Enttäuschung (DE, 2006), Tomasz Stanko Quartet (PL, 2007), Vijay Iyer, Eric truffaz,m ICP orkestra, MMW, Jiohn Scofield, Pharoah Sanders in Charlie Haden

External links

Ljubljana Jazz Festival

Contents

Music programme

Clean Feed collaboration

History

=Jazz festival programme until 1981

=Jazz festival programme after 1982

See also

External links

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