8th conference, Jazz Encounters, Graz, April 3-6 2024

The eighth Rhythm Changes Conference, Jazz Encounters, will take place at the Institute for Jazz Research (University of Music and Performing Arts, Graz, Austria) from 3 to 6 April 2024. This conference is organised in conjunction with the fourteenth International Jazz Research Conference. 

Keynotes

We invite submissions for Jazz Encounters, a four-day multidisciplinary conference bringing together researchers, writers, musicians, critics, and others interested in jazz studies. The event will feature academic papers and panels.

Jazz is a music born of encounter. Jazz encounters are dynamic; they create synergies and frictions and have the power to reconfigure social and political spheres. To understand these encounters is to understand ongoing processes of identity-making and the history and meaning of jazz in the world. Jazz encounters have arisen from and are influenced by myriad factors, including histories and legacies of enslavement, cultural and creative exchanges, ideological contestation, technological change, new modes of communication, economic development, trade, war, occupation, and political consolidation. These processes of encounter and migration – of people, ideas, goods, and objects – shape understandings of the music and its impact on society, from the influence on the lives of individuals to the ideology of societal institutions.

We welcome papers addressing the conference theme from multiple perspectives, including cultural studies, musicology, cultural theory, music analysis, jazz history, media studies, and practice-based research. We particularly welcome contributors who identify as women or gender diverse and from other under-represented groups and communities within jazz studies and academia more generally. Within the general theme of Jazz Encounters, we have identified several sub-themes. Where relevant, please clearly specify which sub-theme you are referring to in your proposal.

Gendered Encounters

Gender has shaped every aspect of jazz, from social interactions between practitioners to how different gendered experiences affect and reproduce understandings of and participation in jazz cultures. This strand aims to challenge established gender narratives in jazz by deconstructing exclusionary, binary, cis-normative, and male-dominated models of practice and interaction. We invite papers investigating social inclusion, diversity, and gender roles in various aesthetic, performative, social and political contexts, including the role of gatekeepers and the relevance of intersectional power relations across multiple career stages. We furthermore welcome investigations that propose new paradigms for evaluating musical experiences. This strand was developed in collaboration with the Centre for Gender Studies and Diversity, University of Music and Performing Arts Graz.

Jazz in Times of Crisis

Jazz has often been created and experienced amid a sense of crisis, be it personal, organisational, economic, social, or political. Whilst crises can cause anxiety and distress, they can also serve as catalysts for change, resulting in creative actions, innovations, and reflections on existing practices. Equally, jazz has often been described as a music in crisis, generating hyperbolic writings that highlight an existential threat to the art form or the precarity of the music as a cultural practice. Within this strand, topics could include reflections on jazz in crisis, its relationship to war, the climate emergency, post-pandemic responses, economic crises, forced migration, and political extremism. 

Well-being

The relationship between jazz practices and their impact (both negative and positive) on well-being is rarely discussed, and yet, such explorations are needed now more than ever. Particularly since claims of jazz’s societal value and transformative potential are often made without evidence, and the mental and physical health of those involved in jazz is rarely considered. We are interested in evidence-based interventions that help gain a deeper understanding of jazz and well-being to better support the music in the future and to make improvements that are sustainable for different groups. Subjects for consideration may include jazz and mental health, disability, ageing, social inequalities, environmental challenges, working conditions, economic welfare, and work-life balance.

Digital Encounters

Digital technologies give rise to powerful new forms of communication and new ways of acquiring knowledge and distributing information. They transform cultural values and identities by enabling novel types of connectedness and amplifying social divisions and differences. Jazz has embraced and arguably sometimes resisted the transformative potential of the digital. This strand aims to help us consider how digital technologies have brought about social and cultural changes in jazz and how those changes have been influenced by society and culture. We are particularly interested in discussions of VR, XR, and AI and their impact on jazz cultures and practices, alongside broader discussions of the digital revolution in music, from recording technologies to live performance to social media. 

People and Places

There are strong links between music, senses of place, and people’s social and cultural identities, including race, ethnicity, class, and gender. From the evocative symbolism of Ellington’s ‘Harlem’ to the images of the post-industrial landscapes invoked by DJ Spooky, jazz has played an important role in the narrativisation of place. It has been central to how individuals and groups have defined their relationship to local, everyday contexts, as well as disrupting or even erasing those connections and challenging assumptions about homelands and origins. In this strand, we invite papers that map the relationship between music, place, and people, whether past, present, or future. We welcome discussions of scenes, communities, and networks from the perspective of placemaking, and belonging, memorialisation, and the imaginary. 

Further information

Please submit your proposal (max. 250 words), including a short biography (max. 50 words) and institutional affiliation, as a Word document to Christa Bruckner-Haring (Conference director): rhythmchanges@kug.ac.at.

The deadline for proposals is 15 September 2023; we will communicate outcomes to authors by mid-October 2023. The conference committee comprises Christa Bruckner-Haring, Christa Brüstle, André Doehring, Nicholas Gebhardt, George McKay, Sarah Raine, Loes Rusch, Walter van de Leur, and Tony Whyton.

Jazz Encounters is hosted by the Institute for Jazz Research and the Center for Gender Studies and Diversity at the University of Music and Performing Arts Graz in cooperation with the International Society for Jazz Research. It continues to build on the legacy of the research project Rhythm Changes: Jazz Cultures and European Identities (2010–2013), funded as part of the Humanities in the European Research Area (HERA) Joint Research Programme. In the spirit of Rhythm Changes, the project team continues to develop networking opportunities and champion collaborative research in transnational jazz studies.

Updates on the conference will be available on the Institute for Jazz Research website, here on the Rhythm Changes website, Facebook, and X.

To register, click here. Early bird fee valid until 4 Feb.

Rhythm Changes Amsterdam 2017 conference

The organising committee met at Amsterdam Conservatory in late September 2016 to reflect on the Birmingham conference at Easter, and to discuss the theme and call for papers for our 2017 conference… Announcement imminent, but do note the 2017 dates below! The committee consists of (L-R in photo) Dr Loes Rusch (BCU), Dr Christa-Bruckner-Haring (Graz), Prof Tony Whyton (BCU), Prof Nick Gebhardt (BCU), Prof Walter van de Leur (Amsterdam) and ace photographer Prof George McKay (UEA).

#jazzutopia: versions thereof, at the conference

The only jazz utopias we can know are the ones we have lost” – Krin Gabbard

More’s Utopia rests on an underclass, which resonates with jazz history, slavery” – Alyn Shipton

At the wonderfully rich and varied (as well layered, nuanced and intermittently Guelphian) 4th Rhythm Changes international conference in jazz in Birmingham a number of different versions and glimpses of what might be thought of as the idea or problem of utopia in relation to jazz have been offered. Here are ones I heard and thought of from the four brilliant days. Others that you heard/spoke/glimpsed/played? There must be. Please do contribute! Together they give a sense of how utopian thinking can inform jazz studies, perhaps of the limits of utopia thinking, perhaps of the limits of utopian thinking in jazz and musicology.

  • Space of jazz (especially in repressive regimes) for instance, jazz happening in underground clubs, multiracial spaces in racist societies, jazz dance floor as site of pleasure and freedom. Also jazz and festivals, and the utopian possibility of transformation at festival.
  • Jazz challenges in its early days: the music’s reception in the early 20th century in for example European countries to national categories of identity and national (cultural) institutions. Jazz changed what it meant to be German, French, British, say.
  • Jazz as diasporic cultural practice and its relation to utopia (utopia = no place = transit culture, rooted in initially Atlantic middle passage). Also other later nomadic narratives.
  • Related social cultural practices and metaphors of sociality (food, dancing, though I didn’t hear much about sex, which I thought strange).
  • Jazz as music for social justice: the radical as well as liberal politics of the music. From civil rights to Breathless, as well as the music’s place in activism in countries outside the US.
  • Jazz as transnational music, exploring and making dialogue between and across nations.
  • Jazz and childhood: innocence (?), playfulness (we saw merry-go-rounds and swings at jazz festivals–yes, jazz swings!), toy pianos.
  • Utopia not as perfect but as imperfect: flaunted imperfection of (instrumental) technique in some musics (some free improvisation, some trad jazz).
  • Jazz as dystopian sound: one early reviewer described it as possessing ‘the buzzing rattle of a machine gun, only not so musical’.
  • Utopian strands in the music itself? Something utopian in the sounds themselves, the dialogic process of the bandstand, the collective, and in the (live) music’s improvisational impermanence.
  • & magic? Black magic?

And I thought of this too: what about the conference itself as a utopian intellectual (social, cultural) compressed time-space – we here at Rhythm Changes are in a “good place” for jazz research, one we thought up (dreamed) then made with you over the past 6-7 years. (OK, I am writing this at the very end of the conference so am both bleary-eyed and wearing rose-tinted glasses: such a view needs qualifying by reminding ourselves that utopia is also functionally exclusive; we need to acknowledge the event’s dominant whiteness and the notable male presence of delegates.)

Jazz Utopia 2016 conference, organising committee meeting

The fourth Rhythm Changes conference, Jazz Utopia, will take place at Birmingham City University in the United Kingdom from 14 to 17 April 2016. We are delighted to have received well over 100 proposals from around 25 countries for papers, panels, and various creative events. Today we are meeting to evaluate abstracts. If you submitted one, you will hear from us very soon. And, thank you, by the way! Judging by the quality and range of abstracts, it”s going to be a great conference. Here is the organising committee at BCU today, led by Dr Nick Gebhardt (right).

Jazz Utopia 2016 conference, call for papers, deadline September 1 2015

The fourth Rhythm Changes conference, Jazz Utopia, will take place at Birmingham City University in the United Kingdom from 14 to 17 April 2016. The deadline for paper submissions is 1 September 2015; this is a reminder so you don’t miss the deadline!!

Keynote speakers
Prof Ingrid Monson (Harvard University)
Prof Raymond MacDonald (University of Edinburgh)

We invite paper submissions for Jazz Utopia, a four-day multi-disciplinary conference that brings together leading researchers across the arts and humanities. The event will feature academic papers, panels and poster sessions alongside an exciting programme of concerts delivered in partnership with the Birmingham Conservatoire and Jazzlines.

Jazz has long been a subject for utopian longing and hopes for a better future; it has also been the focus of deeply engrained cultural fears, visions of suffering and dystopian fantasies. In its urgency and presence jazz is now here. As improvisational and transitory, jazz is nowhere. Utopia is nowhere and now here. Jazz is utopia. Or: jazz is utopian desire. Jazz Utopia seeks to critically explore how the idea of utopia has shaped, and continues to shape, debates about jazz.

We welcome papers that address the conference theme from multiple perspectives, including cultural studies, musicology, cultural theory, music analysis, jazz history, media studies, and practice-based research. Within the general theme of Jazz Utopia, we have identified three sub-themes. Please clearly identify which theme you are speaking to in your proposal.

Jazz identities: Claims have always been made for jazz as a certain utopian practice, in which jazz has made possible a musical-social space where different, usually marginal, identities are expressed and confirmed. At the multiracial club, bandstand, or dance-floor race and ethnicity are acknowledged, difference is championed or erased. Musicians have used jazz to step out of their class. The dialogic qualities and queer sounds alike of jazz offer opportunity for the expression of gender and sexuality. New thinking around disability and music reads jazz as a crip-space. Equally, consider the way in which freedom in improvisation has been understood as a liberating utopian practice. Even in its diasporic invention jazz comes from a kind of no-place (ou-topia = no place). In utopia, jazz is the effort to sound another world into being, the only condition of which is that it must be better. Has jazz really been that good?

Inside / outside: jazz and its others What does jazz mean to its community of insiders and those that approach it from outside? For those who are deeply involved with jazz, whether musicians, critics, scholars, or fans, the genre often provides a utopian space for creative encounters. By definition, the articulation of this space through performance, writing, research and consumption also creates a community of outsiders who may seek ways to engage with the jazz community or observe it from afar. This strand invites papers that address the relationships between jazz and its “others”, defined in relation to music making, criticism, scholarship or reception, whether these interactions are antagonistic or collaborative in tone.

Heritage and archiving: This strand focuses on the different ways in which heritage practices and archival work contribute to the reconfiguration of jazz as a utopian space. Through its commitment to alternative ways of living and being, jazz offers imaginative variations on themes of history and preservation. It creates communities of collectors and music lovers, who refigure jazz as nostalgia and escape, as well as renewal and return. We welcome papers that explore all aspects of archiving practice and cultural heritage and the opportunities and tensions that present themselves for scholars, institutions and practitioners in these fields.


Proposals are invited for:

  • Individual papers(20 minutes) – up to 350 words.
  • Themed paper sessions of three individual (20 minute) papers – 350 words per paper plus 350 words outlining the rationale for the session.
  • Seventy-five minute sessions in innovative formats – up to 1000 words outlining the form and content of the sessions.

Please submit proposals (including a short biography and institutional affiliation) by email in a word document attachment to: jazzutopia@bcu.ac.uk

The deadline for proposals is 1st September 2015; outcomes will be communicated to authors by 1st October 2015. All paper submissions will be considered by the conference committee:

  • Dr Christa Bruckner-Haring (University of Music & Performing Arts, Graz),
  • Dr Nicholas Gebhardt (chair; BCU),
  • Prof George McKay (University of East Anglia),
  • Loes Rusch (University of Amsterdam/BCU),
  • Dr Catherine Tackley (Open University),
  • Prof Walter van de Leur (University of Amsterdam/Amsterdam Conservatory),
  • Prof Tony Whyton (BCU/Birmingham Conservatoire).

The conference builds on the legacy of the Rhythm Changes research project. Rhythm Changes: Jazz Cultures and European Identities was funded as part of the Humanities in the European Research Area (HERA) Joint Research Programme, which ran from 2010-2013. The project team continues to develop networking opportunities and champion collaborative research into transnational jazz studies.

Updates on the conference and information about travel and accommodation will be available on this site over the next few months.

New book, The Pop Festival, from Rhythm Changes, with jazz festival research

We are delighted to announce the publication this summer of The Pop Festival: History, Music, Media, Culture (Bloomsbury), edited by George McKay, which features contributions from other Rhythm Changes scholars too: Anne Dvinge, Andrew Dubber, Nick Gebhardt. Altogether there are 14 essays from UK, USA, Europe, Australia (see table of contents below). The book is well-illustrated with archive and contemporary images of festival posters, ephemera, and includes a photo-essay on the British counterculture. Here’s what scholars in the field have been saying about it already: ‘nothing less than an alternate history of popular music since the Second World War’ Prof William Straw; ‘a lively, challenging, accessible and eclectic collection’ Prof Chris Gibson; ‘[in] this wonderful book, McKay assembles a series of masterful essays’ Prof Andy Bennett.

In particular essays by Anne (Detroit Jazz Festival) and George (feat. Beaulieu Jazz Festival, 1956-61) deal with the jazz festival. Here’s a short extract from Anne’s excellent study of Detroit, ‘Musicking in Motor City: reconfiguring urban space at the Detroit Jazz Festival’, which draws on her ethnographic and observational research there.

… the festival is intimately tied to the cultural and economic history and geography of Detroit. It functions as a marker of identity as well as a creator of radical space. Issues of production and economic gain, of tourism economy and commercial interests are central, but so are issues of participation and community that transcends the boundaries of the festival and its locale whilst being rooted in both place and tradition. I outline this history and development through three perspectives: the urban concept city, the role of music and the festival’s connection with both. I finally offer a reading of the festival with Christopher Small’s concept of musicking – music as a verb rather than an object – in mind. That is, a ritual that functions as “a form of organized behaviour in which humans use the language of gesture – to affirm, to explore, and to celebrate their ideas of how the relationships of the cosmos operate, and thus, how they themselves should relate to it and to one another”. Thus, the jazz festival performs a complex vernacular play and ritual that ultimately celebrates and connects Detroit with its past, present and future. Any city festival may achieve a temporary transformation of the urban; here I show how joy takes root annually in Detroit, and I also discus the specific contribution of the musical practice that is jazz to making a particular kind of festival and transformation.

 


 

The Pop Festival contents

Introduction
George McKay

Chapter 1. ‘The pose is a stance’: popular music and the cultural politics of festival in 1950s Britain
George McKay

Chapter 2. Out of sight: the mediation of the music festival
Mark Goodall

Chapter 3. “Let there be rock!” Myth and ideology in the rock festivals of the transatlantic counterculture
Nicholas Gebhardt

Chapter 4. ‘As real as real can get’: race, representation, and rhetoric at Wattstax, 1972
Gina Arnold

Chapter 5. The artist at the music festival: art, performance and hybridity
Rebekka Kill

Chapter 6. Photo-essay: Free festivals, new travellers, and the free party scene in Britain, 1981-1992
Alan Lodge

Chapter 7. Festival bodies: the corporeality of the contemporary music festival scene in Australia
Joanne Cummings and Jacinta Herborn

Chapter 8. The Love Parade: European techno, the EDM festival, and the tragedy in Duisburg
Sean Nye and Ronald Hitzler

Chapter 9. Protestival: global days of action and carnivalised politics at the turn of the millennium
Graham St John

Chapter 10. Alternative playworlds: psytrance festivals, deep play and creative zones of transcendence
Alice Oa??Grady

Chapter 11. No Spectators! The art of participation, from Burning Man to boutique festivals in Britain
Roxanne Robinson

Chapter 12. Musicking in Motor City: reconfiguring urban space at the Detroit Jazz Festival
Anne Dvinge

Chapter 13. Branding, sponsorship, and the music festival
Chris Anderton

Chapter 14. Everybody talk about pop music: Un-Convention as alternative to festival, from DIY music to social change
Andrew Dubber

Index

Planning for the Rhythm Changes 2016 conference, Birmingham City University, UK

A group of us from across Europe are meeting today to look back on the previous three Rhythm Changes conferences (Amsterdam 2012, Salford 2013, Amsterdam 2014) and to plan for our next conference in 2016 at, as we announced in Amsterdam last September, Birmingham City University (BCU). You coming to it? We hope so.

The organising committee is:

  • Dr Nick Gebhardt, BCU (lead organiser)
  • Prof Walter van de Leur, Amsterdam
  • Dr Loes Rusch, Amsterdam
  • Dr Christa Bruckner-Haring, Graz
  • Prof Tony Whyton, Salford
  • Prof George McKay, UEA
  • Dr Catherine Tackley, Open University.
RC2016 organising committee meeting, BCU, 3 February 2015
RC2016 organising committee meeting, BCU, 3 February 2015

We are talking about the theme(s) for the 2016 conference, its structure, how to present jazz ideas in traditional and alternative ways, how BCUs disciplinary and intellectual identity (media – music – industry) could be reflected as host of the event, potential keynotes and invited speakers, and the specific dates of course. (Early-mid-April 2016 seems most favoured at the moment.)

Some ideas for our theme and key strands we are discussing are as follows (bear in mind these are in draft and need working up, but we thought you might like a sneak preview):

Jazz Utopia

  • jazz identity/ies. Race and ethnicity, gender, sexuality (queering jazz, Sapphonics), disability and jazz.
  • inside / outside: jazz and its others. What does jazz mean to its community of insiders and those that approach it from outside?
  • heritage and archiving. The ways in which our relationship with the past enables us to imagine and construct jazz as an alternative space and practice.

Professor in Residence, EFG London Jazz Festival 2014

[PRESS RELEASE]

GEORGE McKAY APPOINTED PROFESSOR IN RESIDENCE AT THE EFG LONDON JAZZ FESTIVAL

Professor George McKay is the first academic ever to be appointed “Professor in Residence” at a jazz festival.

In conjunction with Serious and the Arts & Humanities Research Council (AHRC), Professor McKay will be joining the team of the EFG London Jazz Festival on 1 November 2014.

“I’m delighted to be the first Professor in Residence at the EFG London Jazz Festival. Allow me to introduce myself: I’m George McKay, Professor of Media Studies at the University of East Anglia and I’m also currently an Arts & Humanities Research Council (AHRC) Leadership Fellow for one of its priority areas, the Connected Communities Programme. My books include Radical Gardening (2011), Shakin’ All Over: Popular Music & Disability (2013) and a collection called The Pop Festival (2015). But you’ll probably be most interested in Circular Breathing: The Cultural Politics of Jazz In Britain (2005), a book about the development of jazz, free improvisation, political campaigns, New Orleans-style marching bands, questions of race and gender in this music of “liberation”. I’ve followed up recently with some more work on the neglected 1950s Trinidadian pianist Winnie Atwell.

One of my focuses in terms of Connected Communities is the idea of festival – how does this density and intensity of cultural activity transform its environment (whether that’s tents and soundsystems in a field or trumpets in a city street), and what is the impact on the local population and audiences.

But why should the EFG London Jazz Festival appoint a Professor in Residence right now? There’s been a real explosion of interest in what’s being called the New Jazz Studies from UK academics over the past decade. In terms of British jazz, academic books by Catherine Tackley, Hilary Moore, and me, have all explored the contribution of the UK to jazz development and history. Jazz Research Journal, edited by Tackley and Tony Whyton, publishes quality research by international scholars. A new Routledge series, Transnational Jazz Studies, is edited by Whyton and Nick Gebhardt.

And there have been notable major research projects, like Rhythm Changes: (EU-funded, led from Salford University) and What Is Black British Jazz? (AHRC; Open University). AHRC currently funds a PhD student, Alison Eales, looking at the 25-year history of Glasgow Jazz Festival, co-supervised between the festival and Glasgow University. You can watch a great film made this year about researching jazz festivals on Youtube: Tom Perchard of Goldsmiths was awarded an AHRC Early Career Fellowship for a project entitled Jazz in France, 1934-75. At the moment my university is in the process of appointing a one-year AHRC postdoctoral research assistant working across London and other jazz festivals, looking at their impact and value.

So, working with the EFG London Jazz Festival team, we thought it a good idea to try to bring some of this academic energy and insight around jazz to festival-goers. We’ve built on some work from last year, when we marked London’s 21st birthday with a day of talks at the Royal Festival Hall, and curated a programme of discussions around questions of politics, power and history. For a music that talks a lot about freedom, these are key questions to debate, and we’re bringing together academics, and some critics and musicians, to unpack them and to explore the roles that jazz musicians, activists and cultural workers in Britain have had in making their musical and political mark. Please, do join us.

Prof George McKay

Full talks programme listings

All talks are free

Saturday 15 November

South Africa 20 years on and the legacy of the Blue Notes: Southbank Centre / Front Room 12.45 & 3.30pm

Knife in the Water – discussion about the music of the film’s charismatic composer, Krzysztof Komeda: Barbican Cinema, 3pm

Way in to the Way Out: Arun Ghosh and Zoe Rahman (Part 1): Southbank Centre / Front Room 4.30pm

Sunday 16 November

Jazz Record Requests with Alyn Shipton: Barbican FreeStage 2pm

Way in to the Way Out: Arun Ghosh and Zoe Rahman (Part 2): Southbank Centre / Front Room 4.30pm

Tuesday 18 November

The Art and the Value of Commissioning New Music – with Trish Clowes and Guy Barker: Southbank Centre / Queen Elizabeth Hall 6pm

Wednesday 19 November

Jazz Rants: The Jazz Industry and The Creative Economy: Club Ingales 7pm

Thursday 20 November

Hear Me Talkin’ To Ya – Stefano Bollani: Barbican 6.30pm

Friday 21 November

Hear Me Talkin’ To Ya – Kenny Barron & Dave Holland: Southbank Centre / Queen Elizabeth Hall 6.30pm

Saturday 22 November

Improvisation and action – the legacy of John Stevens: Southbank Centre / Front Room 2pm

“the space is the place”: the art of programming: Barbican 5.30pm

Blue Note at 75 – Don Was meets Richard Havers: Southbank Centre / Level 5 Function Room 6pm

Sunday 23 November

Jazz and Gender: Southbank Centre / Front Room 12.45pm

For full details visit efglondonjazzfestival.org.uk/talks

_______________________________________________________________________________________

EFG LONDON JAZZ FESTIVAL MEDIA ENQUIRIES

Please contact Sally Reeves +44 (0)1223 864710 | +44 (0)7790 518756 | sallyreeves@btinternet.com

Issued by Piers Mason at Serious +44 (0)20 7324 1880 | piers.mason@serious.org.uk
For information on all EFG London Jazz Festival shows please go to efglondonjazzfestival.org.uk

NOTES TO EDITORS
The EFG London Jazz Festival is produced by Serious, one of the UK’s leading producers and curators of live jazz, international and new music. Serious produces events that range from major concerts, festivals and national and international tours through to learning and participation programmes, conferences and specially commissioned bespoke events. Alongside its core role as a live music events producer, it works in artist and rights management. Alongside this exists the registered charity, Serious Trust, which has been established to support the next generation of artists and audiences through our artist development, learning and participation and commissioning programmes
serious.org.uk

The London Jazz Festival was created in 1992 by live international music producers, Serious. The Festival emerged from the long-standing Camden Jazz Week which was created in 1970; with the active support of the London Arts Board (now Arts Council England, London). Serious – who had for some years produced the Camden Jazz Week, engineered a transition that saw the evolution of the Festival. Taking a mix of international and British artists and a commitment to education activity, the London Jazz Festival began to spread its wings. The aims of the Festival still remain the same today; celebrating the place of jazz in a city which is at ease with its rich cultural diversity, and drawing in a multitude of venues across London who present the music, week in, week out, throughout the year.
efglondonjazzfestival.org.uk

EFG International is a global private banking group offering private banking and asset management services, headquartered in Zurich. EFG International’s group of private banking businesses operates in around 30 locations worldwide, with circa 2,000 employees. EFG International’s registered shares (EFGN) are listed on the SIX Swiss Exchange. It is represented in the UK by EFG Private Bank, which offers a range of wealth management services in the UK (with offices in London and the Midlands) and Channel Islands.
Practitioners of the craft of private banking:A?efginternational.com

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