Aarhus Jazz Festival takes over the city with exciting experiences and music

1/6/2024 | Forfatter: Rikke Engsig Nielsen | Fotograf: Bo Petersen

Now there are only a fortnight until the Aarhus Jazz Festival fills the city with exciting concerts and experiences. Open your ears and let yourself be inspired by this year's festival.

From the 13th - 20th July you can experience over 300 jazz concerts at 40 different venues around Aarhus - for the Aarhus Jazz Festival 2024. This year, the festival has an extra focus on community, cohesion and the meeting between musicians. The festival has therefore invited two guest artists in artist residency, the drummer Emil de Waal and the multi-instrumentalist Gustaf Ljunggren. You can experience the dynamic duo from Saturday to Wednesday across the festival - in a number of different genre and musician meetings.  Both with their own music and in meetings with various musicians from the experienced forces of traditional jazz to younger jazz talents who take them out on wild ventures.

Community singing and traditions

There is also a focus on the community for concerts that interpret the Danish song treasure and invite the audience to sing along. The award-winning jazz musician Jacob Anderskov interprets, among other things, songs from the High School Songbook. The audience is invited to sing along to well-known songs from the High School Songbook in an improvisational community where anything can happen. As part of Bazarjazz, the ensemble ÆT also presents a number of hymns in completely new ways.

International jazz on the stages

At this year's festival, there is also plenty of opportunity to experience some of jazz's big international stars and listen to jazz from all over the world. From Japan to the USA, Europe and Scandinavia. Among other things, you can experience Cécile McLorin Salvant in the Musikhuset.  She is one of the greatest jazz vocalists of our time and sings songs inspired by her French/Haitian roots. You can also experience international musicians such as the American Grammy-winning trumpeter Randy Brecker, the Swedish songbird Lisa Ekdahl in concert with the Aarhus Jazz Orchestra and the saxophonist Loren Stillman, who is an innovative voice in modern jazz. 

Urban jazz for the Aarhus Jazz Festival

The festival also has an eye on the development within jazz music in the more urban and groove-oriented direction. At the festival you can experience many exciting mixes of jazz and urban music genres. Last year, a mini-festival was presented for the first time in the festival, where you could sink into a groovy atmosphere of fusion between hip-hop and jazz for a whole day in the Dome on the edge of the harbour. This year you can experience ICY IGLOO vol. 2 in the same place. Behind Godsbanen, a new initiative is presented this year; Volume Jazz Village. It is the Aarhus Jazz Festival and Volume Village which offers a music program centered around jazz, fused with electropop, Afro, hip-hop and reggae.

Open your ears and expand your horizons

This year is the 36th time that a jazz festival has been held in Aarhus, and again this year there is the opportunity to listen to all kinds of jazz music from the traditional to the experimental. 

The festival offers plenty of jazz that breaks the boundaries and lets you hear something you've never heard before. This year you can, among other things, experience Maria Dybbroe and her orchestra Caktus, who are visited by the Norwegian Ojkos, at the venue turkis. It will be a sensual and magnificent concert with a total of 15 musicians on stage. At the Papirlageret in Sydhavnen you can also experience lots of experimental concerts, including Lotte Anker, Kresten Osgood and Røysum. In Langenæskirken, a completely new festival stage this year, you can experience a concert with percussionist Marylin Mazur's trio, and you can hear Langenæskirken's new organist Olga Witte, who is among other things the winner of the prestigious Gaffel prize. The church also presents guitarist Mark Solborg's Tungemål, which is an improvisational project inspired by language and spatiality. It will be intense and improvised chamber music at a high level. 

At the festival, you can also take part in jam sessions, come to lectures about jazz, learn to play jazz music yourself and come to jazz concerts aimed at families and children. It all starts with a bang with a Street Parade with the Aarhus Jazz Festival Brass Band, where everyone is welcome to participate. The parade starts at the Musikhuset in Aarhus and then we walk together through the streets of Aarhus for a party and jazz music.

During the festival, there will be concerts here:

A-Huset – Institut for (X)
Apollon
ARoS Aarhus Kunstmuseum
Café Gaya
Café Gemmestedet
Café Støj
CasaV58
Det 3. Rum
Dokk1
Domen – Bylivshuset – Pier 2
Erlings Jazz- & Ølbar
Fairbar
FOF – Ingerslevs Boulevard 3
FOF – Søndergade 74
Gellerupscenen
Hantwerk
HeadQuarters
Klostertorvet
Kunsthal Aarhus
Langenæskirken
Musikhuset Aarhus
Musikhusparken
Palmehaven
Papirlageret
Piano Værkstedet
Salling ROOFTOP
Skt. Lukas Kirke
Tir Na NÓg
turkis
Verdenspladsen
VinDanmark
Volume Village
Wahlberg Studio
Zanders Bar
Øst for Paradis
Aarhus Domkirke
Aarhus Hostel