Australian Jazz in Europe
- a market development project
Project background
Australian Jazz in Europe is a two-year market development project with funding provided by the Australia Council for the Arts. Realised by the Australian Music Centre in partnership with SOUNDS AUSTRALIA, the project creates opportunities for Australian jazz in Europe.
The project involves a series of activities around the annual Jazzahead industry event in Bremen, Germany, extending the scope of our existing partnership with SOUNDS AUSTRALIA. We are also making use of the opportunities through the AMC's membership of the Europe Jazz Network.
Over the past few years, the AMC and SOUNDS AUSTRALIA have employed a raft of highly successful strategies to strengthen the visibility of Australian art music at Classical:NEXT in Rotterdam each May. Australian Jazz in Europe seeks to emulate this success for Australian jazz.
The opportunities for deeper engagement at Jazzahead include (but are not limited to):
- Advocacy for Australian representation in decision-making contexts, for example, inclusion of an Australian on the Jazzahead jury. In 2019 this has already been achieved, with Melbourne Jazz Festival CEO Jennifer Kerr serving on the 2019 jury, and Paul Grabowsky (pianist, composer and executive director, Performing Arts at the Monash Academy of Performing Arts) on the 2020 jury;
- Complementing the annual reception at the SOUNDS AUSTRALIA stand with a hosted event involving international programmers and potential collaborators, to provide face-to-face networking opportunities;
- Developing an Artistic Associates program at Jazzahead, providing an opportunity for Australian jazz artists to develop their international networking skills.
Other aspects of the project include bilateral collaborations and exchanges through the Europe Jazz Network and its associated European Jazz Conference, presented in a different European city in September each year - this event regularly draws over 350 delegates. As the only EJN member in the Southern Hemisphere, the AMC is ideally placed to take advantage of its active presence in this energetic and highly connected network, where members interact and engage with each other with a dizzying array of programming exchanges, collaborations, and projects. We see such engagement as having enormous potential for the Australian jazz community, far beyond the term of this project.
Reports & coverage
> Hamed Sadeghi and Reuben Lewis to Jazzahead as 'Artistic Associates' (Resonate 30 January 2020)
> A progress report on Resonate (August 2019)
> Australians at Jazzahead 2019
> 'My Jazzahead experience' - blog article by Zela Margossian, Artistic Associate at Jazzahead (Resonate 29 May 2019)
> 'European Jazz Conference 2019: jazz nurturing the soul' - blog article by Aviva Endean, Artistic Associate at the EJN conference in Novara, Italy (Resonate 10 December 2019).
