Jazz & The City Salzburg 2019: The Old Town for everybody

5 days - 30 stages - 70 concerts - free admission
This year from October 16.-20. the Salzburg Festival Jazz & The City celebrates its 20th anniversary. Founded and financially supported by the Altstadt Verband Salzburg, it has developed into an international festival for explorers over the years - with over 25,000 visitors yearly.

The old town of Salzburg as the headliner
Neither the big names of the usual suapects as headliners were used to attract this audience, nor the musical zeitgeist. The exciting mix of mostly young bands, the fact that it all is difficult to classify stylistically certainly plays an important role: Is this jazz? Electronic, Pop, World Music? Who cares? Nobody, if the level of musicality is high, the mood good and the „surroundings“ more than all right.

Here lies the real reason for the high number of visitors, the strikingly colorful mix of visitors: the "surroundings" in the city of Salzburg! It has long been understood by Jazz & The City that it's about presenting jazz more easily, liberated from the "ghetto" of the usual venues. The free admission is certainly a door opener to a music many believe to be elitist, not accessible for "normal" music fans. Especially for skeptics like these it is the place that makes the music, and that is why the actual headliner of the festival is the charming old town of Salzburg with its variety of locations that can be transformed into unusual venues - if you really want to and then go and do it.

Opposites attract
Jazz & The City plays a pioneering role in the colorful festival landscape. It lives from the resulting contrasts: quiet, contemplative moments in the vaulted cellar of an inn, loud e-guitar sounds in the baroque church. Or vice versa: filigree singing in the church and swing jazz with punk attitude in the large party hall. Some visitors stroll along the tracks of exciting sounds through the backyards of the old town. Others seek a bath in the crowd as French super bands stir up the crowd in the SZENE theater. Have you ever been to the small cinema of the Shakespeare Bar, listened to the sound of the big organ called "Salzburger Taurus" at the fortress, or experienced world-class music on the sofa of a small guitar shop?

300 artists from 19 countries - and yet one big family
Those who do not book the big names of the Hancock-Marsalis-League can invest their money in even more promising bands whose names are more likely to elicit a "wow!" from connoisseurs. American Rising Stars like the trumpeter Theo Croker or the saxophonist James Brandon Lewis. In the case of Rolf Kühn, who is celebrating his 90th birthday in Salzburg, one should better speak of a headliner per se. World music acts like Somi or Habib Koite still have more class than popularity.

This is also true for Dudu Tassa with his band The Kuwaitis, or the experimental pianist Elliot Galvin, at least in this country – but as soon as the Israeli has been on stage at the opening night and the Brit played one of his sensational concerts with saxophonist Binker Golding, they will likely be the talk of the town.

Large ensembles as guests
A particular logistical challenge this year was the fact that many great and equally large ensembles are on the road to Salzburg. The Euroradio Jazz Orchestra under the direction of Christoph Cech, the Jazzorchestra Vorarlberg, the Belgian anarcho band Flat Earth Society, or Little Rosie's kindergarten, which in addition to "5 / 8erl in Ehrn", Mira Lu Kovacs (also with 5KHD), Echo Boomer u.v.a. belong to the extensively represented Viennese scene.

Jazz & The City is a special, unfamiliar family-festival also for the participating musicians. Bands and solo artists come to town and stay for several days. They do not only play a concert, but appear in various formations, some heard here fort he first time. But sometimes they will also play the same program a second time. The audience is happy that they can catch up on missed performances or get to know especially appreciated musicians from another side. The artists are happy to experience the city up close (otherwise rarely possible on tour), to develop closer report with the audience (maybe meeting on the Mozartsteg during shopping), and to try out new things with each other. They do not experience something like this as close or as comfortably anywhere else than in Salzburg.

Improvisation. Curiosity. Art. free space
Jazz is improvisation and yes, sometimes complicated. But especially in these times, we learn that it is worthwhile to listen more closely, to be open for something new,  different, foreign. Anyone who experiences a band live on stage, with all their energy, the fun of spontaneously reacting to each other, will discover that it is also thrilling music he would maybe not have expected.

Those who love to discover are particularly encouraged to visit the festival's blind dates. Here, musicians that have never been together before play concerts. The boundaries to other art forms have been blurring in Salzburg for quite some time: to crossover projects, to fine art, film, or multimedia. The invited artists include the Italian architect and sound designer Nicola di Croce, the multimedia artist Stefano D'Alessio from Vienna and the Hamburg artist Katrin Bethge, whose overhead projections will be particularly visible at night.

The baroque idea transformed into the contemporary
This year, the festival extends the musical exploration of the city: more actitivities during the day and in the public spaces, more things on offer for all age groups, more browsing in other disciplines. Out into the squares and streets, into the alleys, backyards and hiding places of Salzburg! Together with co-curator Oliver Hangl, who is very active in Vienna with his mobile concerts, the Viennese „Complaint choir“, or stage play concerts in the public space, Tina Heine presents the city with new formats: whispering tunnels, pop-up stages, jazz games - many only announced last minute via push alerts on the festival app. "We deliberately want to bring the baroque idea, which in this city is not only so intact architecturally, the strange, the weird, the overloaded, into the here and now."

"Hot spots" in the old town and an APP that can do more than a program flyer
The surprising offer of HOTSPOTS could - like the entire festival - not be possible if the entrepreneurs in the old town did not engage themselves in the festival with such enthusiasm. They open their houses to music, finance the concerts as generous sponsors through a circle of friends of the festival, and invite musicians and visitors to the shops, bars and restaurants with many special promotions.

More details on the app and website of the festival answer questions like: Where can I get something to eat before the concerts, where a drink at midnight? What is there to do for the little ones, where is shopping particularly fun, and with special promotions for Jazz fans?

If you do not want to miss anything, not even the most spontaneous concerts and promotions, need information on whether a venue is already too full or a concert is starting late, are open for tips from the festival office - you should definitely download the Jazz & The City Festival APP.

A lot of new things, many others proven to work in previous years. On to a new round of the festival for those who want to discover music beyond the usual, whether connoisseur or newcomer!

Thanks to the supporters!
The Jazz & The City Festival is made possible by the Salzburg Altstadt Tourist Board and its members, the city of Salzburg, the Salzburg Tourism Fund and thanks to the support of the following sponsors: Stieglbrauerei of Salzburg, AutoFrey, and the Trumer Privatbrauerei. Another thanks to all location and cultural partners for the good cooperation.