The London Jazz Festival is a mainstay of the capital’s live music calendar – but this year it will be a little different. Running from Friday 13th to Sunday 22nd November, the festival will be ‘Living in Two Worlds’: blending live music and digital streams in a wide-ranging programme of local and international jazz artists.
This year’s festival will include 100 live shows across 10 days, taking place in 25 venues around London. There will be a mixture of free and paid-for events, with tickets available on the London Jazz Festival website.
The event was launched last night (24th September) in an online event, which revealed this year’s lineup alongside live performances from Rosie Turton, Sarathy Korwa and Linda May Han Oh.
The festival will carry the spirit of the jazz movement in this unusual year, adapting and improvising to bring music into living rooms around the world. As the launch event’s host, Fusion, said in the opening minutes of the livestream: “This is jazz, what do you expect? We improvise.”
Pelin Opcin, Director of the EFG London Jazz Festival, said: “In this unprecedented year, we’ve managed to transform the challenges into a positive motivation.
“Inspired by the creative response of artists, musicians and the scene in general, we’ve worked together to make the festival happen and can’t wait to share the buzzing music of the UK, alongside unique performances by international artists, with a global audience.”
The festival’s signature opening night, Jazz Voice, will host world-leading jazz vocalists including Cleveland Watkiss, China Moses, Luca Manning and David McAlmont, live from Cadogan Hall on 13th November.
Other performances throughout the festival will include producer/multi-instrumentalist Tenderlonious, Mercury-nominated quartet Dinosaur, saxophonist Camilla George, Henry Lowther’s Still Waters and more, across iconic London venues such as Ronnie Scott’s, Jazz Café, Café OTO, and the Barbican.
Brand new for 2020’s festival is the innovative Jazz Yoga. Audiences will bring their yoga mats to Islington Assembly Hall for a performance by award-winning bass player Shri Sriram, which will create an atmospheric backdrop to a yoga sequence led by Constanza Ruff.
This year’s festival will certainly be a unique experience: wherever they are in the world, jazz fans will be able to experience London’s seminal music venues from their homes.
For more details on the events and livestreams, and to get tickets, see the EFG London Jazz Festival website.
Words by Rachael Davis