On 30 April, Katowice will celebrate UNESCO International Jazz Day together with the whole world. The Katowice JazzArt Festival, which is held on this occasion, will feature many novelties, but also some long-awaited returns.
April has been a month full of jazz in Katowice from 2012 onwards. Organised since then, the Katowice JazzArt Festival (this will be its 12th edition) brings to the city performers and soloists from all over the world and presents the most interesting phenomena on the Polish jazz scene.
This will also be the case during this edition. This year, you can look forward to a musical feast from 25 to 30 April.
On the stages of JazzArt (mainly in the City of Gardens and JazzClub Hipnoza), we will see and hear creative Silesian improvisers (the Perforto duo), outstanding Estonian instrumentalists (the double bassist Mingo Rajandi and the pianist Kirke Karja) or the extraordinary Portuguese duo 293 Diagonal. We will also meet artists who have not performed in Katowice for a long time, but who were stars of previous festival events, such as Sofia Jernberg or Mats Gustafsson, who appeared in Katowice with the Fire! Orchestra exactly five years ago.
Thanks to an exchange as part of the MOST programme, artists from North Macedonia, the progressive trio Kanton6, are making their debut in Katowice. An absolute star of the contemporary British jazz scene, Alexander Hawkins will perform at JazzArt for the first time, and so will the phenomenal vocalist Yumi Ito, who opens the festival in the chamber hall of the NOSPR.
It is no coincidence that the invited artists are largely women - JazzArt is the first music festival in Poland which promotes the work of female jazz artists. As a member of the international Keychange initiative, it already achieved gender equality several editions ago.
The exact festival schedule and ticket details at jazzartfestival.eu
