Schedule

Since 1994, World Music Expo (WOMEX) has been attracting musicians, agents, a great number of press agencies, as well as media companies from all over the world. Its main exposition event has been held in various locations throughout Europe, including Berlin, Brussels, Marseille, Stockholm, Seville, Cardiff, and Budapest. In 2018, WOMEX was held in Las Palmas, Gran Canaria. One of its showcase participants, Lucibela, comes from the island of São Nicolau. Her assured, warm voice is shaped by years of assimilation to the sounds of morna and coladeira.

Annual trade fair, exhibition, and festival jazzahead! is one of the international jazz community's most important events. Hosted in Bremen, Germany, jazzahead! brings together musicians, bookers, agents, organizers, jazz experts, and music enthusiasts at the world’s largest jazz event. In 2023, jazzahead! paid special attention to Germany’s jazz scene and invited thirty jazz acts from all over the world to perform over the course of three days. Among the artists presenting themselves at jazzahead! 2023 is Finnish composer Jussi Reijonen. Reijonen’s ensemble promises a transient experience "unlike anything in memory.” For his long-form suite “Three Seconds | Kolme Toista” for a new transcultural 9-piece ensemble, Reijonen collaborates with musicians from Jordan, Iraq, Palestine, Turkey, Japan, and the United States.

Annual trade fair, exhibition, and festival jazzahead! is one of the international jazz community's most important events. Hosted in Bremen, Germany, jazzahead! brings together musicians, bookers, agents, organizers, jazz experts, and music enthusiasts at the world’s largest jazz event. In 2023, jazzahead! paid special attention to Germany’s jazz scene and invited thirty jazz acts from all over the world to perform over the course of three days. Among the groups presenting themselves at jazzahead! 2023 is Schntzl. This Belgian duo of pianist Hendrik Lasure and drummer Casper Van De Velde creates hyper-visual music that is provocative yet kind. Schntzl has been performing all over Europe, playing concerts at AB in Brussels, Bimhuis in Amsterdam, the Gateshead Jazz Festival, Nasjonal Jazzscene in Oslo, and Altes Pfandhaus in Cologne.

Jazzed Out proves that a jazz session can take place anywhere. Unusual locations, such as garage buildings, multi-storey car parks, street corners, subway trains, and parks, in several of the world’s metropoles, provide the setting for brief jazz performances. The sheer rawness of the metropoles merge with the musical creations of various artists in search of the perfect ‘urban stage’. In this episode, London serves as a backdrop for sets by trumpeter Matthew Halsall, saxophonist Soweto Kinch, and pianist Neil Cowley.

Since 1977, Estival is a summer jazz festival in Switzerland, Lugano. Estival offers a thrilling and particularly surprising line-up that explores the rich world of contemporary music whilst promoting the understanding of different cultures, tolerance, and co-existence. The composer, trumpeter and bugle player Franco Ambrosetti performs with his quintet in his native Lugano as part of the Estival.

Five promising musicians get together in Rotterdam jazz club BIRD’s artists-in-residence project “The Nest”. In this first broadcast we get to know Lisette Ma Neza (slam poet), Peter Somuah (trumpet), Michelle Samba (drums), Huy Le (bass), and Brenn Luiten (piano). Over the course of seven sessions, they exchange ideas, work on their projects, and play music together. Following this period, during which record producer Jameszoo and music manager Jochem Tromp offer their coaching experience, BIRD and North Sea Jazz Festival’s fringe festival DownTown organize a tryout performance. Enjoy this unique collaboration of upcoming musicians!

‘Harmolodics’, the musical philosophy of jazz saxophonist Ornette Coleman, is associated primarily with avant-garde jazz and the free jazz movement, although its implications extend beyond these limits. Coleman defined ‘harmolodics’ as “the use of the physical and the mental of one's own logic made into an expression of sound to bring about the musical sensation of unison executed by a single person or with a group”. Applied to the particulars of music, this means that harmony, melody, speed, rhythm, time and phrases all have equal position in the results that come from the placing and spacing of ideas - as evidenced in this broadcast of a performance by the Ornette Coleman Sextet.

Trumpeter Jacques Kuba Séguin’s ensemble unites some of Montreal’s most expressive musicians: apart from Jacques Kuba Séguin, double bassist Frédéric Alarie, pianist Jonathan Cayer, and drummer Kevin Warren deliver subtle but strong lyrical moments, that make it hard not to be touched by the musical bond of this group. The experience of their ‘Litania Projekt’ seems to stop time for an instant. Together with his expressive musicians, Jacques presents a program that swings between modernity and tradition.

The November Music festival in ‘s-Hertogenbosch, the Netherlands is the ultimate event for experiencing a broad range of music. It features a wonderful variety of contemporary and experimental pop, sound art, non-Western music, jazz and free improvisation. The closing concert for the 2016 edition offers a great example of this musical wealth - Dutch composer and pianist Rembrandt Frerichs’ fantastic trio play a wonderful set with Cello8ctet Amsterdam and renowned Iranian tar player Hossein Alizâdeh. Rembrandt Frerichs studied in New York and lived in Cairo for several years. His music has the drive of American jazz, the lyricism of Middle-Eastern music, and the sensitivity of the chamber music of Claude Debussy and Maurice Ravel. The combination of Frerichs’ trio with Cello8ctet and Alizâdeh is unique. Their music is a miracle of organic creativity, and a shining fusion of old and new world music.

Georgie Fame, known for "Yeh, Yeh" and "The Ballad of Bonnie and Clyde" makes a triumphant comeback with The Blue Flames. Georgie Fame and the Blue Flames was a popular band in the UK in the '60s, celebrated for its R&B, soul, jazz, ska, and pop sounds. The training was largely inspired by ska, a popular musical style in Jamaican cafes in London at the time. It was the song "Green Onions" from the Booker T & The MG that inspired Georgie to incorporate the Hammond organ into her compositions. This performance by Georgie Fame and the Blue Flames is brimming with blues and soulful sounds that will delight the group's old and new fans.

Innovative contemporary jazz and improvised music, the search for modernity, mind blowing sounds, rock and pop… Indeed PARADOX Tilburg goes beyond jazz, crossing musical boundaries into the unknown soundscapes of electronic music. Indie artists, blues veterans and jazz superstars all pour their hearts and souls at the Paradox. From young, local talents to top national and international artists, PARADOX Tilburg is the most intimate jazz club in the Netherlands, with a devoted audience from all across Europe. In their TV show PARADOX LIVE you get a taste of the greatest concerts and interviews with artists from all around the world. This episode of PARADOX LIVE presents the Tilburg based Bertus Borgers and his Young Retro's!

Although its music might sound like the soundtrack of any 1970s American car chase movie, the band Sven Hammond Soul is from the Netherlands. This steaming soul machine is headed by Sven Figee, who prefers to attack rather than play his Hammond organ. In April 2012, the band was augmented with vocalist Jenny Lane. Today’s recordings were made at a steaming live performance at Utrecht’s Tivoli in 2012.

Dexter Gordon: Live in '63 & '64 features three concerts filmed in Holland, Switzerland, and Belgium that highlight the bebop legend's classic style and silky tone. These shows feature legendary side musicians such as Art Taylor (drums) and Kenny Drew (piano), and jazz classics “Blues Walk”, “A Night In Tunisia”, “Body And Soul”, and others. One of the most influential saxophonists in jazz history, Dexter Gordon is captured in sharp form and style in this 70-minute tour de force.

Rotterdam’s ‘ BIRD’ is a club, café and restaurant with a live music programme that's deeply rooted in jazz, and also branches out towards soul, funk, hip-hop and electronic music as well. Its name ‘BIRD’ refers to the nickname of the legendary New York jazz saxophonist, bebop co-founder Charlie Parker (1920-1955). BIRD serves Neapolitan pizzas, good wines, no-nonsense beers and an all-round metropolitan rawness. Since 2014, this urban jazz club and DJAZZ.tv have been collaborating for a series of music programmes: ‘BIRD.tv’, allowing you to experience the best BIRD concerts and interviews as from a first row seat! This episode is reserved for ‘De Deeldeliers’, featuring poet and so-called ‘Night Mayor of Rotterdam’ Jules Deelder (*1944). His poems cover Rotterdam city life, drug use, and jazz. In De Deeldeliers, he is accompanied by Hammond organist Bas van Lier, tenor saxophonist Boris van der Lek, and drummer Erik Kooger.

On ‘Diggin’ the Duke’, Deborah J. Carter tackles the compositions of Duke Ellington. Taking his original compositions as her point of departure, Carter expresses many facets of her own personality. She applies the necessary vocal technique, but it’s the way she handles the lyrics that draws you in: her scat solos are as creative as they are provocative! Carter is accompanied by a quality band, consistent of bass player Mark Zandveld and Leo pianist Bouwmeester. Mark and Leo wrote new, updated arrangements of Ellington’s compositions, and Deborah penned original lyrics to a number of Ellington’s instrumentals. The band uses a mix of swing, Latin and fusion rhythms, in combination with adventurous harmonies. Carter’s name has become so well-known that she probably had little trouble finding guests musicians willing to contribute to this project, among whom the phenomenal saxophonists Efraim Trujillo and Emiel Wienholts.

The Newport Jazz Festival, first established in the North-American town of Newport, Rhode Island in the summer of 1954, has now grown to become one of the largest multi-day celebrations of jazz worldwide. It has resulted in numerous famous live albums from top-rate jazz stars, and has spawned several worldwide tours, including editions of the Newport Jazz Festival in Rotterdam, The Netherlands. In October 1968, two former colleagues met again on stage, this time leading their own bands at the Newport Jazz Festival in Rotterdam: drummer Art Blakey and pianist Horace Silver were both co-founders of The Jazz Messengers.

This selection of unforgettable performances by some of the most iconic and influential male jazz and pop vocalists in history showcases these legends’ unique essence. Delight in the expressive beauty and emotional depth of Chet Baker's rendition of “Time After Time” and “You Don't Know What Love Is", recorded live in Brussels, Belgium in 1964 and in Rome, Italy in 1956 respectively. Revel in Frank Sinatra's iconic version of “I've Got You Under My Skin". Immerse yourself in Dizzy Gillespie's dynamic performance of “Let Me Outta Here”, recorded live in Denmark in 1970. Enjoy Tony Bennett's unforgettable performance of “It Don't Mean A Thing (If It Ain't Got That Swing)” at London’s majestic Royal Albert Hall in 1974. Let the haunting beauty of Nat King Cole's 1957 performance of “Autumn Leaves” and Louis Armstrong's performance of “Basin Street Blues” from 1959 delight you. Dean Martin’s smooth vocal stylings will enthrall you as he performs the jazz standard “Wrap Your Troubles In Dreams". Witness the electrifying energy of Sammy Davis Jr.'s performance of “Too Close For Comfort”. Join us for this unforgettable musical experience that you'll surely cherish!