Jazz & The City Festival - October 17th-21st 2018

Let’s Get Lost

At a time when many seem to have lost their sense of adventures, when Trip Advisor tells us where to go, when we trust a weather app more than our own eyes, when people search for partners via social media and Spotify tells us which songs are essential in our own playlist, the Jazz & The City Festival invites everyone to leave their filter bubbles and to just go with the flow.

Meticulous planning will certainly get you lost here - and that's exactly what it’s all about! "Let's get lost" is the theme of the 19th edition of this festival for Jazz, World & Electronic Music.

100 concerts at over 40 locations, all with free admission? On the five days of the festival the old town of Salzburg puts a very special side on display, with a variety one should hardly suspect behind the picturesque backdrop along the Salzach. Old workshops in the middle of the Getreidegasse, party cellars under baroque churches, the Salzburg Landestheater, the Mozarteum University next to the iconic guitar shop, the Künstlerhaus with open studios, inns and hotels. All of these places and spaces are being reimagined by over 200 musicians from all over the world, united for a few days in this setting and with plenty of artistic freedom. In addition to fixed parts of the program, there also are a number of "blind dates", where it will only be decided who will play with who until right before their start. The artists can meet spontaneously at the festival and try out this encounter in front of the audience. The different rooms with their acoustic challenges often become the third player. Ideally, discoveries at festivals are simply a part of it - at Jazz & The City this is programmatically pushed to the extreme, as there are no genre stages and no categories, no guidelines according to the motto: "If you like this, you will like that, too."

Instinct, curiosity, spontaneity and an open heart for unexpected encounters with music, good people and good places are the ingredients for a festival that you will not forget!

World music as well as local flavors and baroque organ sounds are just as much at home here as improvised music, DJ sets until late at night, city tours with music as well as concerts in contemporary art exhibitions.

The finale on Sunday afternoon in the Mirabell garden is also a tribute to the beauty of improvisation and to the desire to be enchanted. Intendant Tina Heine: „The finale of the festival will be curated by the musicians themselves. Over the course of the week, they will have time to think about - and develop together - where and when they will play. I myself will stay out, will go with the flow and I invite all festival visitors to do the same.“

For those who do not want to go entirely without applications and digital navigation the Jazz & The City Festival App is highly recommended. It is a good companion through the musical pleasure garden of the 'Salzburg Old Town' on these festival days