For me, the end of the Proms always marks the end of summer and the launch of the EFG London Jazz Festival kicks off the autumn proper.
Last night was quite the event - with some incredible music from BBC Radio 3 New Generations Artist Misha Mullov-Abbado and Rob Luft in a collective with Alice Zawadzki, alongside other performances from Abel Selaocoe, and a mesmerising finale from Soweto Kinch and Bellatrix.
I got to speak, and just about made myself heard over the enthusiastic conversations happening all around the room. It’s an exciting time for British jazz. I spoke at another EFG London Jazz Festival launch many years ago - when the first signs of the current Jazz revival were just emerging.
The BBC has supported the festival since the start, and I hope we’ve played our part in bringing jazz to the growing audience it’s enjoying today. But we haven’t been the only ones - whether stations like NTS or Worldwide FM, or Bauer’s Jazz FM. So I’m delighted that we’re working with Jazz FM again to share content from the festival again this year.
As Nick Pitts, Station Controller from Jazz FM puts it, “Jazz is all about collaboration and continually smashing boundaries... working closely with each other we come together for the love of jazz to share this music!”
For the first time, it means that we won’t just share content online, but on air too. A new 30 minute programme from Jazz FM will appear in a special six hour jazz evening on BBC Radio 3. The rest of that evening will feature concerts from Europe, sessions from the BBC Radio 3 new generation artists as well as wider festival content. Some of that wider content includes broadcasts from the London Jazz Festival that will be recorded and broadcast by BBC Radio 3 and will be featured on Jazz FM in return.
The BBC’s role is a very simple, democratic one. We want to bring the best arts and music to everyone. In jazz, that means supporting new talent and the exciting jazz scene, all round the country and beyond. So we were delighted to announce a new jazz programme for Radio 3 called Freeness, a showcase for cutting edge improvised music in all its forms, linking the freedom-oriented roots of jazz to the vibrant underground scenes of the UK and beyond. The programme will be presented by Derby-based vibraphone player and composer Corey Mwamba and will appear on Saturday nights from the 2 November.
But we also want to help those discovering jazz for the first time. So there will be a jazz collection in Sounds which will badge together the content from The EFG London Jazz Festival in a collection that makes jazz even easier to find in the app .
Our podcast Classical Fix, which introduces a music lover to classical music, is having a festival remake as Jazz Fix presented by Tina Edwards (who was on the decks at last night’s launch). Jamie Cullum’s brilliant Radio 2 programme will cover artists from the festival and on TV we will be bringing the greats of jazz’s history to millions of people with a seminal programme on Miles Davis by Stanley Nelson - to be screened at the London Jazz Festival on 16th November 2019. The programme features unseen archive and contributions from greats like Herbie Hancock, Quincy Jones and Wayne Shorter amongst others.
There will also be a BBC Four film on Bluenote by Sophie Huber. For next year we also have a Billie Holliday programme and it has also been confirmed that the final of BBC Young Jazz Musician on BBC Four is to be held at the London Jazz Festival in 2020!
Here’s our press release with details of what the BBC is doing as well as a link to the festival itself.
