Week 33 this year marks the 37th annual Oslo Jazzfestival. Yet another festival in Norways jazz capital, packed with striking concerts and musical experiences from some of the finest jazz musicians in the world.
- This year’s festival aims to stretch the terms of Jazz. The line-up spans from well established musicians with both feet planted in tradition, to genre-bending- and breaking, forward thinking bands like Canadian Colin Stetson, Belgian Farida Amadou and French Julien Desprez, festival director Øyvind Larsen says.
Sunday the 13th of August, Oslo Jazzfestival 2023 starts off with Jan Garbarek Group ft. Trilok Gurtu in The Oslo Opera House. This concert sold out last year, but luckily there are 45 other concerts for the audience to choose from. In addition to this the festival offers a rich side program with student concerts in addition to various talks, an open air concert, movie screenings, a historical jazz tour, and more.
Even though Oslo Jazzfestival have been booking artists who move across genres for many years, this year's festival is centered around references to Norwegian folk music’s influence on jazz.
- Garbarek was one of the first Norwegian jazz musicians to explore this, and these folk music roots can also be found in the artistry of Sinikka Langeland, Solveig Slettahjell, Karl Seglem, Arild Andersen, Selma French, and Benedicte Maurseth, Larsen continues.
During the seven days of Oslo Jazzfestival, the audience will get to experience concerts at Sentralen, Nasjonal jazzscene Victoria, Herr Nilsen, Blå, MUNCH, Cosmopolite, Rockefeller, and Riksscenen, in addition to The Opera. continuing established collaborations with various venues have been important, all the while exploring new venues in Oslo. This year features a new concept for our concerts at Sentralen:
- Every show at Sentralen is planned for Friday and Saturday, and we will be selling day- and weekend passes. In doing so we are hoping to create a nice flow for the audience to roam the venue freely and be able to catch multiple shows in the same night.
At Nasjonal Jazzscene Victoria we will be hosting concerts by Andreas Røysum Ensemble and the Finnish saxophonist Linda Fredriksson amongst others, and MUNCH will feature concerts with Trondheim Jazzorkester & GURLS as well as Dave Douglas New Quintet and more. Last year's winner of the USBL prize, Kristina Fransson, will be presenting her project Coincidences, and former participant of out student programme, ASQ // Amund Stenøien Quartet, will be returning to play on Saturday.
- What every artist that will be performing at Oslo Jazz festival this year have in common, is that they are individual musicians that have paved their own artistic ways, all stemming from jazz. We are very excited to be presenting what we believe to be jazz music of the highest quality in 2023, says festival director Øyvind Larsen.
