EFG London Jazz Festival 2020: All you need to know

It's been announced that the EFG London Jazz Festival 2020 will still press on, despite the pandemic, through a live and digital experience - Living in Two Worlds. The COVID-19 pandemic has forced the festival to think creatively about how music is experienced and is made accessible to a wide audience.

The organisation will aim to bring together exclusive live concerts, a digital platform that streams live and bespoke content, new commissions, interactive creative engagement projects, rare archive recordings, films, talks, interviews, webinars and a series of broadcasts. The plan is for this to be a major live and digital event that lives in two worlds at the same time.

Since 1992, the EFG London Jazz Festival has rapidly become one of the major jazz events both in the UK and internationally, as well as the biggest London-wide music festivals as it traditionally spans 10-days and venues across the capital.

Watch Pelin Opcin - Director of Programming at Serious, who produce EFG London Jazz Festival - explain to Nigel how the festival will go ahead as well as the challenges they have faced.

EFG London Jazz Festival 2020 lineup

On the evening of the 24th of September, EFG London Jazz Festival revealed their lineup via a livestream event.

We held the official afterparties, held on True Brit with Helen Mayhew and then Late Night China Moses. Listen back below:

LIVE:

The Festival’s signature opening night, Jazz Voice, brings an array of wonderful singers and surprise guests at Cadogan Hall, directed by Guy Barker and the specially created EFG London Jazz Festival En-semble, featuring China Moses, David McAlmont, Luca Manning and Cleveland Watkiss, hosted by Jumoké Fashola.

For a special Festival performance, producer/multi-instrumentalist Tenderlonious will lead a showcase of material from his record label, 22a at Shoreditch Town Hall with music from and collaborations between Ruby Rushton, Nick Walters, his Tubby Hayes tribute The Piccolo and more surprises, along with a DJ set from Dennis Ayler.

The iconic Church of Sound returns to the festival with Nathaniel Facey, Shirley Tetteh and Moses Boyd, joining up with Tomorrow’s Warriors’ young musicians, led by Gary Crosby, in celebration of Charlie Parker’s Songbook on his 100th birthday.

At Kings Place there is an extensive programme of music from the heart of the UK jazz scene: Mercury-nominated quartet Dinosaur, celebrating their 10th year together, composer Matt Calvert showcasing his acoustic album Typewritten, Jason Yarde and the ACOUSTASTiC BOMBASTiC ensemble premiering new explorations, the intoxicating “psychedelic Arabic jazz” of composer/trumpeter Yazz Ahmed, the free improvisation of Ill Considered and award-winning saxophonist Binker Golding with material from his latest album Abstractions of Reality Past & Incredible Feathers.

The Jazz Café’s new programme includes James Holden with Waclaw Zimpel, saxophonist Camilla George and the Kansas Smittys House Band. There will be a special new collaboration between Kit Downes and Korean composer SooJin Suh at PizzaExpress Holborn and a programme featuring the likes of Henry Lowther’s Still Waters, Xhosa Cole, Norma Winstone with Nikki Iles and Stan Sulzmann and Jeanie Barton with Tony Kofi at PizzaExpress Dean Street and The Pheasantry. Battersea Arts Centre will host their first EFG London Jazz Festival shows in years with Rob Luft, Elina Duni and Anthony Joseph.

British performance artist GAIKA with Azekel & Miink will present PALATIUM at Café Oto – a collabo-rative audio-visual performance that is a visceral investigation of inner and outer worlds and a haunt-ing and politically pertinent exploration of the artists’ personal archive of jazz vinyl, contemporary electronic production and experimental film.

This year for the first time, the Festival is creating Jazz Yoga, two special events where live audiences bring their yoga mats to experience award-winning bass player Shri Sriram playing live with yoga teacher Constanza Ruff at Islington Assembly Hall.

Special projects not to miss at the Barbican include Cassie Kinoshi’s SEED ENSEMBLE, celebrating the music of Pharoah Sanders who turns 80 this year and a new collaboration with Shabaka Hutchings and Britten Sinfonia.

Other major venues, including Ronnie Scott’s, will be announcing further live programming over the next month, so we will have additional shows and surprises to reveal in the run-up to November.

STREAMS:

The Festival is commissioning a series of exclusive streams with major international artists. So far we have confirmed Armenian piano maestro Tigran Hamasyan, performing from a solo set ahead of his new album The Call Within, jazz bassist Linda Oh, the bass player of Pat Metheny, introducing her new band, and an exclusive concert filmed in Paris by Vincent Peirani & Emile Parisien.

We are also creating a series of films of British artists, including Sarathy Korwar, Rosie Turton and Emma-Jean Thackray at Total Refreshment Centre, and the complete programme of next month’s Between the Lines Festival, with performances of boundary-pushing music, including an Erased Tapes triple bill, collaborations with Leafcutter John and The Spectacular Empire, featuring Anne Müller, Hatis Noit, Loraine James, and more.

Getting involved has always been an integral strand of the Festival and for 2020 we take our free Creative Engagement programme online. Families have the chance to stream Juliet Kelly’s Jazz Kids, a musical story-telling session for children and their grown-ups. Developing professionals can upskill in one of our expert-led masterclasses with band-leader Peter Edwards, improvisation with artists Rob Luft and Elina Duni, and mental health and wellbeing with counsellor Denise Devenish and anyone can headline this year’s Festival by joining Orphy Robinson’s Virtual Jazz Club Band, a project which brings people together whilst continuing to keep our distance. All details are on the Festival website.

On Zoom, writer and broadcaster Kevin Le Gendre will present livestream sessions, ARTicle 10: In conversation with Kevin Le Gendre (referring to Article 10 of the Human Rights Act: “Everyone has the right to freedom of expression”), where he is joined by six special guests for a series of insightful conversations on race, racism and the need for change within the music industry. These discussions will address the most burning issue of 2020 and consider the role the music industry has played and still plays in the long struggle for equality.

The Festival continues its close relationship with Chicago’s ground-breaking label International Anthem, who will be presenting a new sound and movement piece by trumpeter Ben Lamar Gay, as well as a performance by free jazz and spoken word collective Irreversible Entanglements.

There will also be a series of free features on new international jazz: Vilnius Jazz featuring Improdimensija Orchestra and more to be announced, New Switzerland, featuring Julie Campiche, Ikarus and more and Istanbul Psychedelic, featuring special names from Turkish alternative music including Mogollar, Baba Zula and Islandman.

For the first time, the Festival will be presenting a dedicated showcase of artists from Serious’ prestigious Take Five talent development programme. Take Five Presents will feature online performances throughout the Festival from some of the most exciting emerging artists from across the UK’s jazz and improvised music scenes Archipelago, Glasshopper, J Frisco, Jasdeep Singh Degun, Jelly Cleaver, John Pope, Noemi Nuti, Robocobra Quartet, Samuel Eagles, and Skeltr.

Among everything that has happened in 2020, the loss of one of the founders of the Festival, John Cumming, has shaken us all. To make sure he will always be remembered there will be moments in the Festival to mark his work, including a stream created by Peter Wiegold from Club Inégales.

When is EFG London Jazz Festival 2020?

The festival will run from Friday 13 to Sunday 22 November, with details of the festival being announced in September.

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