Difference between revisions of "Ljubljana Jazz Festival"

Latest revision as of 22:49, 16 February 2023

Established in 1960, Ljubljana Jazz Festival is the oldest continuously running jazz festival in Europe, and takes place annually over three or four days at the end of June. Over the decades it has managed to attract an impressive array of world-class performers and improvisers from all over the globe, with a programme that continues to evolve and to take in the latest forms of jazz and improvised music. In 2018, under the stewardship of festival director Bogdan Benigar and co-curator Pedro Costa, it won the Europe Jazz Network's prestigious Award for Adventurous Programming.

Programme

In keeping with the contemporary adage that jazz is about how you play rather than what you play, the festival's programme ranges widely across all forms of jazz expression, from hard, exploratory improvisation, through the recent adoption of found sounds and electronics, to funkier and more soulful styles. The international dimensions of the festival are well-established, with perhaps a slightly greater emphasis on European artists than on those from across the Atlantic in recent years.

61. Jazz festival Ljubljana, Etceteral by Cankarjev dom on YouTube

The festival also features an accompanying programme. Including residency programmes, film screenings, round tables, lectures, poster and jazz photography exhibitions, and multimedia installations. Although the festival is centred on events in late June, Cankarjev dom also stages a year-round programme of events under the festival name, as well as the Tuesday Clubbing (Cankarjevi torki) series, which attempts to keep the festival spirit alive from September to April with an adventurous programme spanning jazz and roots.

Venues

Since 1982 the festival has been held in the concert halls of Cankarjev dom (CD), Slovenia's national cultural centre, with the revitalised CD Club being brought into the fold in 2008 and the CD park (officially the Council of Europe Park) becoming the main venue in the late 2010s. Križanke no longer stages festival events.

Prehistory and early years

The seeds of the festival that formally emerged in 1960 as the Yugoslavian Jazz Festival were sown in the years following the end of World War II and the formation of the RTV Slovenia Big Band. Jazz was incorporated into the band's programme for a few years before being declared politically undesirable, but managed to resurface in the second half of the 1950s. In the meantime, the various Yugoslavian pop festivals had helped create a lively, interconnected music scene that meant that the first edition of the jazz festival edition had an extensive, ready-made line-up featuring musicians from all parts of the federal republic. Correspondingly, the Slovenian pop music festival Slovenska popevka, established in 1962, shared most of the Slovenian musicians who appeared at the jazz festival.

For the first six years, the festival took place in Bled, before moving to Ljubljana in 1967. Three years later, it installed itself in what would become its home for many years: the Križanke complex in the city centre. For the first two decades or so, the festival was organised by Jazz Society Ljubljana, and its close ties with the RTV Slovenia Big Band, then a bastion of Slovenian jazz traditionalism, meant that the programming remained broadly conventional and, to some extent, conservative. The festival featured more or less exclusively Yugoslav musicians and Yugoslav radio big band ensembles, although there were notable exceptions, such as the Albert Mangelsdorff Quintet (1962), the Modern Jazz Quartet (1964), the Krzysztof Komeda Quintet (1965), Jean-Luc Ponty (1967) and Memphis Slim (1968).

1970s

The 1970s brought a loosening of the unspoken strictures that had applied in the festival's first decade, with free jazz, fusion and "ECM jazz" gaining admittance (if not full acceptance). The international dimensions of the festival also expanded, with some of the biggest names of the decade appearing in Ljubljana: Bobby Hutcherson and Harold Land in 1971, the Bill Evans Trio and Ram Chandra Mistry in 1972, the Archie Shepp Quintet in 1973, the Jazz Messengers, the Stan Getz Quartet and Odetta in 1974, the Elvin Jones Quartet in 1975, the Cecil Taylor Quintet in 1976, Paul Bley in 1979 and the Pharoah Sanders Quartet in 1981.

1980s

In 1982, organisation of the Ljubljana Jazz Festival passed from Jazz Society Ljubljana to the newly opened Cankarjev dom national cultural centre. This heralded the establishment of a new curatorial model, with the enlarged programming panel seeking to open the festival up more fully towards new jazz and new improvised forms. While this met with some resistance and a fair amount of public polemic, it was well received by a younger audience keen to move on from the older sounds. The first signs that things were changing came with the appearance of the Sun Ra Arkestra in 1982, followed by other figures from the left field of jazz: Steve Lacy and Mal Waldron, Irene Schweizer, the Lester Bowie Ensemble, and the Keith Tippett-Peter Brötzmann Quartet.

Internal squabbles continued, which led to that portion of the programme panel agitating for further reform, and for the inclusion of other (experimental) genres of music, establishing the Druga Godba Festival in 1985. The festival nevertheless managed to maintain a strong programme through the 1980s, with appearance from the likes of the Vienna Art Orchestra, Anthony Braxton Quartet, the Trevor Watts Trio, the Julius Hemphill Jah Band, Dudu Pukwana and Zila, the McCoy Tyner Trio, the Art Ensemble of Chicago, Max Roach, Roscoe Mitchell and Gilberto Gil.

1990s and the 21st century

By now a well-established stop for some of the world's top jazz musicians, the festival played host in the 1990s and early 2000s to artists such as Steve Coleman's Five Elements, Miles Davis, the Don Byron Klezmer Orchestra, the Bill Frisell Group, Defunkt, Marc Ribot, the Peter Brötzmann Chicago Tentet, Femi Anikulapo-Kuti and the Positive Force, the Jan Garbarek Group, the Ornette Coleman Quartet, Abdullah Ibrahim, the Wayne Shorter Quartet, Reggie Workman, Charlie Haden Quartet West and Kenny Garrett.

After celebrating its 50th birthday in 2009, the festival continued to present strong programmes comprised of established artists, emerging talents and special projects: Han Bennink, Avishai Cohen, Hamilton de Holanda, Richard Galliano, John Zorn (with various projects), Peter Brötzmann (who was the subject of a four-concert special focus in 2013), Maria João, John Scofield, Neneh Cherry (with The Thing), David Murray, Macy Gray, Sly and Robbie with Nils Petter Molvær, Mercedes Sosa, Gregory Porter, the Vijay Iyer Trio, Peter Evans, Nate Wooley, Dans Dans and Fire! Orchestra.

Neneh Cherry & The Thing - Dirt (Ljubljana Jazz Festival 2012) by Frances577 on YouTube

2016 onwards

Starting in 2016, the festival took another of its frequent left turns, moving part of the programme into the CD park for a series of free daytime and early evening concerts. The park programme has since been extended in volume and scope to become an established part of the festival, in keeping with the stated aim of creating a "jazz community" and of attracting new audiences perhaps less inclined to take a punt on performances in the more formal indoor settings of the cultural centre. The move paid off handsomely in 2020, when the relaxed outdoor character of the festival, a mixture of live performances and big-screen streaming, made it one of the most joyous events to take place in the capital during the brief Covid-19 summer hiatus.

The renewed emphasis on providing a platform for Slovenian acts, in place from 2017 or so, is a further element of the festival's attempt to build a jazz community, as well as to capitalise on what is something of a homegrown "golden generation": Jure Pukl, Marko Črnčec, Igor Lumpert, Žiga Murko and Žan Tetičkovič in New York, Dré Hočevar and Kaja Draksler in Amsterdam, and Jani Moder, Kristijan Kranjčan, Cene Resnik, Igor Matković, Samo Šalamon and Boštjan Simon in Ljubljana. All have played the festival, solo or in various formations, since 2015. The 2019 and 2020 editions featured the Alphabet and Young Explorers series of concerts, which was curated by Dré Hočevar and showcased some of the young musicians clustered around the .abeceda Institute.

However, as the festival's seventh decade gathers pace, the space remains very much open to new (and older) international avant-garde sounds in jazz and beyond: James Blood Ulmer, Evan Parker, Mats Gustafsson, Ken Vandermark, the Yussef Dayes Trio, Archie Shepp, Emilia Martensson, Shabaka Hutchings, Nasheet Waits, Hamid Drake, Paal Nilssen-Love and Moor Mother, to name only a few. While the new outdoor focus of the festival has led to a more intimate atmosphere, use continues to be made of CD's indoor venues for marquee events: Gallus Hall in Cankarjev dom for the mammoth John Zorn Bagatelles Marathon in 2019, for example. In that same year, Križanke was also used for the first time since 2013 for a performance by US multi-genre ensemble Snarky Puppy.

Directors and curators

Bogdan Benigar became the festival director in 1999, working under artistic directors Oliver Belopeta (Skopje Jazz Festival, 2000–2004) and David Braun (2005–2008) before taking sole custody of the programme for two editions. He was then joined as co-curator by Pedro Costa (2011–2017) and Edin Zubčević (Jazz Fest Sarajevo 2018–).

Costa's involvement also resulted in the ongoing Ljubljana Jazz Series of live recordings, released by Clean Feed Records of Lisbon, one of Europe's most daring improvised music labels, and home to quite a number of Slovenia's younger jazz generation. Eleven records have been released so far, with more expected. This follows on from a well-established festival tradition of live recording that stretches back 50 years and includes Cecil Taylor's legendary Dark to Themselves album.

External links

@@ Line 1: / Line 1: @@
 {{Article
-| status       =
+| status       = INFOBOX NIFERTIK!
-| maintainer   = Anže Zorman
+| maintainer   = JoelDSmith
 }}
 {{Infobox
-|name                  = Jazz festival Ljubljana
+|name                  = Jazz Festival Ljubljana
 |street                = Prešernova 10
 |town                  = SI-1000 Ljubljana
@@ Line 16: / Line 16: @@
 |contacts = {{contact
 |name                  = Bogdan Benigar
-|role                  = Festival programme director
+|role                  = Festival Director
 |email                 = bogdan.benigar@cd-cc.si
 |telephone             = 386 (0) 1 241 7157
+}}
+{{contact
+|name                  = Edin Zubčević
+|role                  = Programme Co-curator, Head of Jazz Fest Sarajevo
+|email                 = flyedofly@yahoo.com
+|telephone             =
 }}
 | frequency          = annual
-|dates and duration  = July, early, 3 days
+|dates and duration  =
-|duration weeks      = 26 (2012) 27 (2013) 27 (2014)
+|duration weeks      =
-| festival dates     = 1.7.2015 - 4.7.2015
+| festival dates     = 1.7.2015 - 4.7.2015, 28.6.2016 - 2.7.2016, 28.6.2017 - 1.7.2017, 27.6.2018 - 30.6.2018, 18.6.2019 - 22.6.2019, 17.6.2020 - 20.6.2020, 28.7.2021 - 31.7.2021, 28.7.2021 - 31.7.2021, 15.6.2022 - 18.6.2022, 5.7.2023 - 8.7.2023
 | accounts =
-https://www.facebook.com/pages/JAZZ-FESTIVAL-LJUBLJANA/117398791635021
+https://twitter.com/LjubljanaJazz
+https://www.facebook.com/jazzfestivalljubljana/
+https://www.instagram.com/ljubljanajazzfestival/
+https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL56fwuP6lPeChdjIgfCepTYdtmzP7yg3o
 }}
 {{Teaser|
-Established in [[Established::1960]], the international [[Ljubljana Jazz Festival]] is the oldest jazz festival in Europe. It is also the central international jazz event in Slovenia that throughout the decades 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.
+Established in [[Established::1960]], [[Ljubljana Jazz Festival]] is the oldest continuously running jazz festival in Europe, and takes place annually over three or four days at the end of June. Over the decades it has managed to attract an impressive array of world-class performers and improvisers from all over the globe, with a programme that continues to evolve and to take in the latest forms of jazz and improvised music. In 2018, under the stewardship of festival director [[Bogdan Benigar]] and co-curator Pedro Costa, it won the Europe Jazz Network's prestigious Award for Adventurous Programming.
+}}
+==Programme==
+In keeping with the contemporary adage that jazz is about how you play rather than what you play, the festival's programme ranges widely across all forms of jazz expression, from hard, exploratory improvisation, through the recent adoption of found sounds and electronics, to funkier and more soulful styles. The international dimensions of the festival are well-established, with perhaps a slightly greater emphasis on European artists than on those from across the Atlantic in recent years.
+{{YouTube|Kj1nBN6VTsw}}
-The heterogeneous and diffuse nature of contemporary jazz music is reflected not only in the festival's history but even more so in the adventurous musical directions it currently display. Here one can meet a broad range of musical expressions, from the more exploratory and unidiomatic practices to metal-flavoured improvisations and funk or soul-tinged jazz ventures. This programme is complemented by an all year-long concert series at [[Cankarjev dom, Cultural and Congress Centre]] called ''Cankar's Tuesdays'', where similar music is being presented on a weekly basis.
+The festival also features an accompanying programme. Including residency programmes, film screenings, round tables, lectures, poster and jazz photography exhibitions, and multimedia installations.
+Although the festival is centred on events in late June, Cankarjev dom also stages a year-round programme of events under the festival name, as well as the '''Tuesday Clubbing''' (''Cankarjevi torki'') series, which attempts to keep the festival spirit alive from September to April with an adventurous programme spanning jazz and roots.
-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.
+==Venues==
-}}
-The festival is organised by [[Cankarjev dom, Cultural and Congress Centre|Cankarjev dom]] and predominantly takes place in the various concert halls of the centre. 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]].
+Since 1982 the festival has been held in the concert halls of [[Cankarjev dom, Cultural and Congress Centre|Cankarjev dom]] (CD), Slovenia's national cultural centre, with the revitalised CD Club being brought into the fold in 2008 and the CD park (officially the Council of Europe Park) becoming the main venue in the late 2010s. [[Križanke]] no longer stages festival events.
-==Music programme==
+==Prehistory and early years==
-The Ljubljana Jazz Festival is quite profiled in terms of what one can expect not to hear - and that is safe reiterations of a traditional jazz expression. So, new music may actually be the most apt term to describe a sizeable part of the festival's programme, which is featured alongside the more mainstream jazz forms.
+The seeds of the festival that formally emerged in 1960 as the Yugoslavian Jazz Festival were sown in the years following the end of World War II and the formation of the [[RTV Slovenia Big Band]]. Jazz was incorporated into the band's programme for a few years before being declared politically undesirable, but managed to resurface in the second half of the 1950s. In the meantime, the various Yugoslavian pop festivals had helped create a lively, interconnected music scene that meant that the first edition of the jazz festival edition had an extensive, ready-made line-up featuring musicians from all parts of the federal republic. Correspondingly, the Slovenian pop music festival [[Slovenska popevka Festival|Slovenska popevka]], established in 1962, shared most of the Slovenian musicians who appeared at the jazz festival.
-The festival is not focused on staging big names &ndash; though they do tend to stop by &ndash; but predominantly (yet not exclusively) on presenting a combination of what is perceived as original, important and fresh music, often played by young and promising artists. Fresh collaborations and music premiers are also appreciated, with the latter often coming in the form of the traditional collaboration of [[RTV Slovenia Big Band]] with the likes of Anthony Braxton, Terje Rypadal, Paquito D'Rivera, etc.
+For the first six years, the festival took place in Bled, before moving to Ljubljana in 1967. Three years later, it installed itself in what would become its home for many years: the Križanke complex in the city centre. For the first two decades or so, the festival was organised by [[Festival of Slovenian Jazz|Jazz Society Ljubljana]], and its close ties with the RTV Slovenia Big Band, then a bastion of Slovenian jazz traditionalism, meant that the programming remained broadly conventional and, to some extent, conservative. The festival featured more or less exclusively Yugoslav musicians and Yugoslav radio big band ensembles, although there were notable exceptions, such as the Albert Mangelsdorff Quintet (1962), the Modern Jazz Quartet (1964), the Krzysztof Komeda Quintet (1965), Jean-Luc Ponty (1967) and Memphis Slim (1968).
-Since the year 2009 and the 50th anniversary of the festival, some of its more prominent guests included Avishai Cohen, Hamilton de Hollanda, Richard Galliano, John Zorn (and a couple of his various projects), Peter Brötzmann (on whom a special focus was held in 2013 with 4 different concerts), Pat Metheny, Maria João, John Scofield, Neneh Cherry (with The Thing), David Murray, Macy Gray, Sly & Robbie and Nils Petter Molvaer, Gregory Porter and Diogo Nogueira. Yet, equally important if less resounding were musicians and bands such as Vijay Iyer Trio, Anthony Joseph & The Spasm Band, Angles Octet, Chris Lightcap's Bigmouth, Farmers By Nature, Peter Evans, various Nate Wooley's appearances, Adam Lane's Full Throttle Orchestra, Dans Dans and Fire! Orchestra.
+==1970s==
-==Clean Feed collaboration==
+The 1970s brought a loosening of the unspoken strictures that had applied in the festival's first decade, with free jazz, fusion and "ECM jazz" gaining admittance (if not full acceptance). The international dimensions of the festival also expanded, with some of the biggest names of the decade appearing in Ljubljana: Bobby Hutcherson and Harold Land in 1971, the Bill Evans Trio and Ram Chandra Mistry in 1972, the Archie Shepp Quintet in 1973, the Jazz Messengers, the Stan Getz Quartet and Odetta in 1974, the Elvin Jones Quartet in 1975, the Cecil Taylor Quintet in 1976, Paul Bley in 1979 and the Pharoah Sanders Quartet in 1981.
-Since 2009, Pedro Costa, who is the head of the Portuguese label Clean Feed, started collaborating with the festival and in 2011 became its co-curator. In that same year, the first concerts were recorded to be later released by the label. This practice has been going on since than and the albums are released under the name ''Live in Ljubljana Jazz Series''.
+{{YouTube|dCpmxjUaZ-Q}}
-Such international curating partnership was already undertaken before, with Oliver Belopeta, the director of Skopje Jazz Festival, being the artistic director of Ljubljana Jazz Festival between 2000-2004.
+==1980s==
-==History==
+In 1982, organisation of the Ljubljana Jazz Festival passed from Jazz Society Ljubljana to the newly opened Cankarjev dom national cultural centre. This heralded the establishment of a new curatorial model, with the enlarged programming panel seeking to open the festival up more fully towards new jazz and new improvised forms. While this met with some resistance and a fair amount of public polemic, it was well received by a younger audience keen to move on from the older sounds. The first signs that things were changing came with the appearance of the Sun Ra Arkestra in 1982, followed by other figures from the left field of jazz: Steve Lacy and Mal Waldron, Irene Schweizer, the Lester Bowie Ensemble, and the Keith Tippett-Peter Brötzmann Quartet.
-The prehistory of the festival, that formally emerged in the year 1960 as the Yugoslavian Jazz Festival, actually goes back to the first years after the Second World War. At that time the [[RTV Slovenia Big Band]] was formed and had for a time enthusiastically played jazz music, which was then soon proclaimed as politically improper and so only resurfaced in the second half of the 50s. Yet, the various Yugoslavian pop festivals of that decade have already created an interconnected and active musical scene that allowed for the first jazz festival edition to already have an extensive line-up with musicians from all parts of the federal republic. Correspondingly, the Slovenian pop music festival [[Slovenska popevka festival|Slovenska popevka]], which was established in 1962, shared the better part of the Slovenian musicians who appeared at the jazz festival.
+Internal squabbles continued, which led to that portion of the programme panel agitating for further reform, and for the inclusion of other (experimental) genres of music, establishing the [[Druga Godba Festival]] in 1985. The festival nevertheless managed to maintain a strong programme through the 1980s, with appearance from the likes of the Vienna Art Orchestra, Anthony Braxton Quartet, the Trevor Watts Trio, the Julius Hemphill Jah Band, Dudu Pukwana and Zila, the McCoy Tyner Trio, the Art Ensemble of Chicago, Max Roach, Roscoe Mitchell and Gilberto Gil.
-While for the first six years the festival took place at Bled, in 1967 it moved to Ljubljana to and in 1970 finally found its traditional domicile in the attractive outdoor venue of [[Križanke]]. Especially in its first few years, the festival was more or less presenting Yugoslavian musicians and the particular republic's own radio big band ensembles, but this has soon changed and the programme developed a strongly international outlook.
+==1990s and the 21st century==
-===Musical programme until 1981===
+By now a well-established stop for some of the world's top jazz musicians, the festival played host in the 1990s and early 2000s to artists such as Steve Coleman's Five Elements, Miles Davis, the Don Byron Klezmer Orchestra, the Bill Frisell Group, Defunkt, Marc Ribot, the Peter Brötzmann Chicago Tentet, Femi Anikulapo-Kuti and the Positive Force,  the Jan Garbarek Group, the Ornette Coleman Quartet, Abdullah Ibrahim, the Wayne Shorter Quartet, Reggie Workman, Charlie Haden Quartet West and Kenny Garrett.
-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]], then bastion of Slovene jazz traditionalism. Alongside the various proponents of jazz music like the Albert Mangelsdorff Quintet (1962), Krzysztof Komeda Quintet (1965), Martial Solal Trio (1968) and Memphis Slim (1968), the festival did also bring quite a few musicians who dealt with the more daring strands of music, like for example the Modern Jazz Quartet (1964), the violinist Jean-Luc Ponty (1967) and the Japanese musicians Kimiki Kasai & Akira Tanaka (1969).
+After celebrating its 50th birthday in 2009, the festival continued to present strong programmes comprised of established artists, emerging talents and special projects: Han Bennink, Avishai Cohen, Hamilton de Holanda, Richard Galliano, John Zorn (with various projects), Peter Brötzmann (who was the subject of a four-concert special focus in 2013), Maria João, John Scofield, Neneh Cherry (with The Thing), David Murray, Macy Gray, Sly and Robbie with Nils Petter Molvær, Mercedes Sosa, Gregory Porter, the Vijay Iyer Trio, Peter Evans, Nate Wooley, Dans Dans and Fire! Orchestra.
-The seventies brought a looser conception of appropriate music and free jazz gained some limited admittance alongside other new expressions like fusion and the so-called ECM jazz. Representative names of that time are Bill Evans Trio (1972), Ram Chandra Mistry (1972), Karin Krog & Arild Andersen (1973), Archie Shepp Quintet (1973), The Jazz Messengers (1974), Stan Getz Quartet (1974), Odetta (1974), Elvin Jones Quartet (1975), Cecil Taylor Quintet (1976), New Terje Rypdal Group (1977), Mombasa (1977), Paul Bley (1979), Airto Moreira Group (1980) and Pharoah Sanders Quartet (1981).
+{{YouTube|4pl8V53faio}}
-===Musical programme after 1982 ===
+==2016 onwards==
-In 1982 the organisation of the Ljubljana Jazz Festival was taken over from the local Jazz Society and Cankarjev dom became its regular organiser, setting up a new curatorial model. Not without resistance and public polemics, the first enlarged programme council also included younger jazz connoisseurs who were groomed under the wing of [[Radio Študent]]. This marked a musical opening towards new jazz, various forms of improvised music, and new trends associated with or inspired by jazz. Also, this was the turning point of the festival's orientation, an orientation that was followed by appointments of various art directors.
+Starting in 2016, the festival took another of its frequent left turns, moving part of the programme  into the CD park for a series of free daytime and early evening concerts. The park programme has since been extended in volume and scope to become an established part of the festival, in keeping with the stated aim of creating a "jazz community" and of attracting new audiences perhaps less inclined to take a punt on performances in the more formal indoor settings of the cultural centre. The move paid off handsomely in 2020, when the relaxed outdoor character of the festival, a mixture of live performances and big-screen streaming, made it one of the most joyous events to take place in the capital during the brief Covid-19 summer hiatus.
-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]] remained as its primary venue. Also, due to the both public as well as lobbied disputes on various "jazz angles" and aesthetic positions, some of the people who pushed a more open musical programme established the [[Druga Godba Festival]] in 1984.
+The renewed emphasis on providing a platform for Slovenian acts, in place from 2017 or so, is a further element of the festival's attempt to build a jazz community, as well as to capitalise on what is something of a homegrown "golden generation": [[Creative Jazz Clinic Velenje|Jure Pukl]], Marko Črnčec, Igor Lumpert, Žiga Murko and Žan Tetičkovič in New York, Dré Hočevar and Kaja Draksler in Amsterdam, and Jani Moder, Kristijan Kranjčan, Cene Resnik, Igor Matković, Samo Šalamon and Boštjan Simon in Ljubljana. All have played the festival, solo or in various formations, since 2015. The 2019 and 2020 editions featured the Alphabet and Young Explorers series of concerts, which was curated by Dré Hočevar and showcased some of the young musicians clustered around the [[.abeceda Institute]].
-To open this new direction, 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 submerged crowd. Other artists who appeared at the festival in that decade are Steve Lacy & Mal Waldron (1982), Irene Schweizer (1982), Lester Bowie Ensemble (1982), Keith Tippett – Peter Brötzmann Quartet (1984), Vienna Art Orchestra (c1985), Anthony Braxton Quartet (1985), Julius Hemphill Jah Band (1985), Dudu Pukwana & Zila (1986), McCoy Tyner Trio (1986), The Art Ensemble Of Chicago (1987), Max Roach (1988), Gilberto Gil (1988) and Henry Threadgill Sextet (1989).
-The nineties brought Sony Sharrock Band (1990), Steve Coleman’s Five Elements (1990), Miles Davis (1991), Don Byron Klezmer Orchestra (US, 1994), Ray Barretto & New World Spirit Orchestra (US, 1994), Bill Frisell Group, Defunkt (1996), Tito Puente & His Latin Jazz Ensemble (1997), Muhal Richard Abrams Quartet (2000), [[Zlatko Kaučič Kombo|Zlatko Kaučič]], (2000), David S. Ware Quartet, Marc Ribot y Los Cubanos Postizos (2001), Peter Brötzmann "Chicago Tentet" (2002), Femi Anikulapo &ndash; Kuti & The Positive Force (2002),  Jan Garbarek Group (2003), Ornette Coleman Quartet (2004), Abdullah Ibrahim  (2005), Martin Medeski & Wood (2005), David Murray & The Gwo-Ka Masters (2006), Alexander von Schlippenbach & Die Enttäuschung (2006), Tomasz Stanko Quartet (2007), Matthew Shipp Trio (2007) and Charlie Haden (2008).
+However, as the festival's seventh decade gathers pace, the space remains very much open to new (and older) international avant-garde sounds in jazz and beyond: James Blood Ulmer, Evan Parker, Mats Gustafsson, Ken Vandermark, the Yussef Dayes Trio, Archie Shepp, Emilia Martensson, Shabaka Hutchings, Nasheet Waits, Hamid Drake, Paal Nilssen-Love and Moor Mother, to name only a few. While the new outdoor focus of the festival has led to a more intimate atmosphere, use continues to be made of CD's indoor venues for marquee events: Gallus Hall in Cankarjev dom for the mammoth John Zorn Bagatelles Marathon in 2019, for example. In that same year, Križanke was also used for the first time since 2013 for a performance by US multi-genre ensemble Snarky Puppy.
-===The Jazz Society===
+==Directors and curators==
-After the festival was organisation was given to Cankarjev dom, ''The Jazz Society Ljubljana'' realised a few editions of a Yugoslavia focused jazz festival, once again held in Bled. Until the mid-nineties it also organised regular jazz concerts in Ljubljana and in 2003 set up the first [[Festival of Slovenian Jazz]]. In 2012, they renamed into the ''The Jazz Society''.
+[[Bogdan Benigar]] became the festival director in 1999, working under artistic directors Oliver Belopeta (Skopje Jazz Festival, 2000&ndash;2004) and David Braun (2005&ndash;2008) before taking sole custody of the programme for two editions. He was then joined as co-curator by Pedro Costa (2011&ndash;2017) and Edin Zubčević (Jazz Fest Sarajevo 2018&ndash;).
+Costa's involvement also resulted in the ongoing '''Ljubljana Jazz Series''' of live recordings, released by Clean Feed Records of Lisbon, one of Europe's most daring improvised music labels, and home to quite a number of Slovenia's younger jazz generation. Eleven records have been released so far, with more expected. This follows on from a well-established festival tradition of live recording that stretches back 50 years and includes Cecil Taylor's legendary ''Dark to Themselves'' album.
 ==See also==
 * [[Cankarjev dom, Music Programme]]
 * [[Križanke]]
-* [[Klub Gromka]]
 * [[RTV Slovenia Big Band]]
 * [[Festival of Slovenian Jazz]]
-* [[International Centre of Graphic Arts, Ljubljana]]
 * [[Druga Godba Festival]]
 ==External links==
-* [http://www.ljubljanajazz.si/index.php/en/ Ljubljana Jazz festival website]
-* [http://www.ljubljanajazz.si/.%5Cindex.php%5Cslv%5C7-posneto-v-zivo-na-jazz-festivalu-ljubljana Live in Ljubljana Jazz Series List] (in Slovenian)
+* [http://www.ljubljanajazz.si/index.php/en/ Festival website]
-* [http://www.ljubljanajazz.si/index.php/en/about-festival/archive A complete list of all the participating musicians]
+* [https://www.facebook.com/jazzfestivalljubljana/ Festival, Facebook]
-*
+* [http://195.69.97.23/2018/jazz/images/ZGODOVINA_LjubljanaJazzFestival.pdf History of the festival, with full list of performers up to 2009] (in Slovenian)
+* [https://www.allaboutjazz.com/tag-ljubljana Ljubljana Jazz Festival tag, ''All About Jazz'' magazine]
+* [https://kongres-magazine.eu/2020/06/jazz-festival-ljubljana-post-corona-cankarjev-dom/ Preview of the 2020 festival, ''Kongres'' magazine, June 2019]
+* [https://www.europejazz.net/2018-ejn-awards-winners 2018 EJN Award announcement, 2018]
+* [https://jazzconnective.eu/participants/5/bogdan-benigar/ Short profile of Bogdan Benigar, Jazz Connective]
+* [https://www.discogs.com/search/?q=%22Jazz+Festival+Ljubljana%22&type=all List of festival live recordings, Discogs]
 [[Category:Music]]
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 [[Category:Music festivals]]
 [[Category:Festivals]]
+[[Category:Jazz]]