The festival returns with some longawaited live music.
Stockholm Jazz Festival is back, and while some things might have changed, thankfully there are others that never do.
One of the biggest musical events on the calendar every year, Stockholm Jazz Festival nurtures the musical heritage of traditional jazz while at the same time building bridges to the casual music lovers who don’t usually venture into that realm. There must have been some doubt along the way about this year’s edition, and things do look just a tad different, but thankfully the festival and its live jazz music will still be going ahead. That’s great news for Stockholm’s live music scene and it would certainly have been a shame to see the October jazz tradition broken, even for something as serious as a global pandemic. The bad news is that the big, international names will not be able to come to spice the festival up. We will, more or less, have to make do with our own domestic Swedish jazz scene. Luckily, that scene’s a very vibrant one, and it’s eager to come out and meet an audience again. Even if the size of said audience still might be capped at 50 people.
Eric Birath, the head honcho of the classic jazz palace Fasching, and the Stockholm Jazz festival director, helps us untangle the story.
I’m sure there has been a lot of back and forth regarding whether this year’s festival was going to go ahead, and just how it was going to look. Could you talk us through your ups and downs along the way to what we will experience here in October?
Usually we release some of the headliners of the festival in April, then have a second release in May. At that time this year, we were all still staying home, not seeing friends, hardly going to shops and the thought of even going to a festival seemed very far away. Gradually, as the summer progressed and the covid cases fell, our hopes of putting on a festival in October seemed more plausible. We finally decided to go through with the festival, even if it meant only 50 people in the audience at every gig. Now it looks like we might be able to get up to 500 people at the largest venues that we use, although we still don’t have final word on this from the authorities.
It’s of course a shame that live music has had to take a back seat to health concerns for this long. When it comes to jazz, would you agree with me it’s a genre where that interaction or link between the audience and the performer in a live setting is even more important?
I think all performance arts are dependent on the interaction between audience and performer, but jazz, with its elements of improvisation and often acoustic setting, feeds off this interaction even more. The clubs and venues used for jazz concerts are often small, making the encounter between performer and audience close and intimate. An attentive audience can trigger a reaction on stage and vice versa, taking the experience of the concert and music to another level.
It must have been incredibly hard to attract any international artists, considering the circumstances, with travel restrictions and quarantines?
In any normal year Stockholm Jazz Festival features artists from 10-15 different countries, this year it is very much a Swedish affair. Touring artists are dependent on being able to play in many different countries and cities in order to finance the tour, so it’s not only the situation in Sweden but in the whole of Europe that has forced most artists to stay in their home countries this fall. We were hoping for some US artists, who still hadn’t cancelled their tours in late August, but the entry restrictions for non-EU citizens were prolonged until October 31, putting an end to that hope. We have had to cancel concerts by artists from Brazil, USA, UK, Norway and so on.
So you can focus more on the Swedish artists instead, but don’t most of the big Swedish names play the festival every year anyway?
The festival has around 200 performances every year, so yes, some of the bigger names in Swedish jazz play almost every year with one project or another. We do however try to make sure that there is a relevancy to the artists that we book that particular year - it can be a new album that has received critical acclaim, a new musical setting or a popular breakthrough.
Is it difficult building a lineup that strikes that perfect balance between the more traditional jazz and whatever else you do to make the festival relevant to music lovers who might not be so well-versed in jazz?
The festival works as a kind of ‘umbrella festival’ where we as the central organizers of the festival book some of our bigger stages and the international artists, as well as try to make sure there is a balance between the avantgarde and progressive and the more traditional jazz. Other promoters and venues book their own acts during the course of the ten-day festival and add their programme to the festival, making it an event with around 200 performances on 50 or so stages. In this programme there will be ‘something for everyone’ if you just dedicate yourself even a little to discovering it. A lot of people have a pre-conceived notion of what jazz is, without really having given themselves a chance to discover all the different styles and artists that are out there. Someone saying ‘I don’t like jazz’ seems to me like saying ‘I don’t like rock’ without considering everything from black metal to Elvis. The scope in jazz is just as immense.
And how much of a gamble is this economically, right now we don’t know whether you are permitted to sell 500 tickets or only 50 to each show? I guess that makes a huge difference to the bottom line.
500 or 50 tickets will make a huge difference but this year we have a very limited number of bigger concerts in order not to gamble too much financially (and also because of the lack of international artists). Most performances are taking place in smaller venues this year and we have had to negotiate fees with artists. Everyone understands that there is less intake to be shared. The festival also has grants from the municipality, the region, and the Swedish Arts Council, without these grants there would be no festival this year.
So in the current circumstances, what’s your greatest hope now when it comes to how this week and a half will pan out?
Our greatest hope is that we will be allowed to have a larger audience than 50 at the larger venues, and of course with the overall general situation that the spread of covid continues to decline in our society. We want our audience to feel safe and to be safe, that’s even more important than music right now, but saying that, we can tell that people are hungry for music and concerts. Nearly all of the gigs we released last week sold out in the first hours, though of course there were only 50 tickets to sell. Hopefully we can offer somewhat more soon.
Finally, can you give me your three not-to-be-missed highlights from the festival progamme?
4 Wheel Drive –
Nils Landgren is an institution in himself in Swedish jazz, the trombonist and singer is immensely popular in Scandinavia and also has a far-reaching international career. In the project 4 Wheel Drive, Nils plays with fellow Swede, the acclaimed double bassist and cellist Lars Danielsson, as well as the German colleagues Michael Wollny (piano) and Wolfgang Haffner (drums). This is jazz that’s easy to take to heart, performed by some of Europe’s foremost instrumentalists.
Oscarteatern, Sunday Oct 18
Ashley Henry –
One of the few international acts of the festival this year (going into quarantine upon arriving back in the UK – thanks for that Ashley!). Ashley Henry is an emerging artist from the extremely buzzing UK jazz scene and part of the Jazz Re:freshed movement. I say emerging, but Ashley has already played with the most influential musicians of his generation; Makaya McCraven, Keyon Harrold and Theo Croker all feature on his debut album from 2019, a jazz album full of influences from hip-hop, funk, and Henry’s own Jamaican heritage.
Fasching, Saturday Oct 10
Rotsystem (Isabell Gustafsson-Ny) -
Isabell Gustafsson-Ny released the album Rotsystem at the height of the pandemic in April. It’s a beautiful album exploring the theme of ancestry and roots featuring some of the most interesting young musicians right now. Jazz built on elements of free jazz, chamber music, pop and folk with a distinctive Swedish or Scandinavian feel to it.
Fylkingen, Thursday Oct 15