AB fully celebrates the richness of jazz in 2023 too. Quite literally: we’ll celebrate the 30th birthday of leading Bruges label W.E.R.F. records with a true two-dayer (involving Echoes of Zoo and Don Kapot, amongst others) and we celebrate the 15th birthday of innovative Mancunian out-there jazz label Gondwana Records with the likes of Hania Rani and Matthew Halsal.

We already honoured the legendary harpist Dorothy Ashby earlier this year with Alina Bzhezhinska and her HipHarpCollective, this autumn it’s the turn of harpist Brandee Younger. The jazz tentacles still stretch out into hip-hop too: Kassa Overall (amongst others: Tomoki Sanders, son of Pharoah Sanders) and B. Cool-Aid (Pink Siifu x Ahwlee) are the living proof of that.

Interestingly: many artists are located at the musical crossroads of Afrofuturism (Angel Bat Dawid’s ‘Requiem For Jazz’) and the Black Lives Matter movement (see: the free jazz of Irreversible Entanglements and poet Aja Monet who mixes her poetry with an urgent hip-hop feel). 

Basically: “Jazz is. Jazz lives. Happens. Moves.” (Jules Deelder)

Check out the entire Jazz calendar here.