Participation from April 28th to May 1st, including the International Jazz Day which is celebrated on April 30th.
As founding members of Portugal Jazz – Portuguese Jazz Network, Associação Sons da Lusofonia and Festa do Jazz will be present at the 2022 edition of Jazzahead!, the biggest international event in the contemporary jazz scene, which takes place between the 28th of April and 1st of May.
The construction of open, creative and unifying networks for the jazz community has always been one of the strategic priorities of Festa do Jazz, the largest jazz festival made by Portuguese people, which has been held for 19 years without interruption. Bringing together musicians, audiences, journalists, promoters and students from all over the country, the festival promoted by Associação Sons da Lusofonia has been a fundamental space for the meeting of new talents and established musicians, reinforcing the crossing of audiences, creating opportunities for young creators and promoting the national and international projection of Portuguese jazz.
Continuing this work, and as a member of Portugal Jazz – Portuguese Jazz Network, an organization dedicated to the dissemination of jazz and the improvement of musicians’ working conditions, Festa do Jazz will be present in the 2022 edition of Jazzahead!, seeking to expand and strengthen the international networks of Portuguese jazz.
The Jazzahead! since 2006, bringing together artists, promoters, agents, publishers, programmers, distributors and journalists from dozens of countries, to network, exchange ideas, share projects and participate in several conferences, panels and dozens of showcases.
The 2022 edition takes place between the 28th of April and the 1st of May, in Bremen, Germany, in face-to-face and virtual format. The dates could not be better framed as the International Jazz Day is celebrated on April 30th.
The Portuguese Jazz Network – Portugal Jazz, its role for Portuguese Jazz and the first-ever Portuguese embassy at the biggest jazz meeting in Europe:
Networking, which has always materialized in the Jazz Festival, has more recently resulted in the officialization of the Portuguese Jazz Network – Portugal Jazz. The future of this Network will be absolutely central to the path that jazz made in Portugal and by Portuguese people abroad will produce, decisively, in opening up wider avenues and in a set of even more ambitious agendas. And, if the notion of community is essential for bringing individuals together through history and a set of common experiences, its network action enhances and formalizes a critical look at the future and streamlines strategies to succeed in it more effectively.
The powerful metaphor that jazz and those who practice it represent before a society that intends to be dialoguing, inclusive and avant-garde, constitutes a powerful negotiation and implementation ballast in that same society, at local, national and international levels. Close collaborations with European partners will certainly lead to full integration into a wider cultural space. This integration – and full mobility within the European space – is extraordinarily advantageous not only for being able to offer opportunities to Portuguese professionals but also for bringing a myriad of perspectives, practices and ways of making jazz across Europe to the country. The exchange of experiences and approaches at an international level amplifies what is already being done at a local and national level, positioning Portuguese jazz in the ecology of continental dimensions, which is constantly challenged and growing and – therefore – at an accelerated rate.
Portuguese jazz will have to overcome its peripherality as a sector in Portuguese society, in order, precisely through its geographical and cultural peripherality in Europe, to capitalize on an interest similar to what the Portuguese historical and natural heritage has already obtained in the recent past. For this reason, the first-ever Portuguese embassy, presented under the name Portugal Jazz, at Jazzahead!, the largest jazz meeting in Europe, represents the first step taken in coordination by those who are truly dedicated to promoting, producing, editing, teaching and jazz research in Portugal and abroad. From Festa do Jazz, where Portugal Jazz started, to this year’s edition of Jazzahead! it turns out that with imagination, freedom, autonomy and organization, Portuguese improvised music can be exported, given the small size of the national market, to the only market that can help its growth and sustainability, the European market. So important is that we are together, pushing our differences to the limit, to the point of becoming projects of unique creativity conquered by those who, with their different audiences and circles, create in Portuguese jazz a multidimensional, permeable and profoundly dynamic identity.
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