Review: The Amersfoort World Jazz Festival: The Background

A music festival of any sort need not be a bare-bones affair where people buy tickets, listen to the musical fare, socialize a bit, perhaps over a drink and then go home with just the memory of the experience. This is a common experience almost everywhere and is quite the accepted norm. Or so we assumed.

We have just attended and returned from a jazz festival in the Netherlands and were very pleasantly surprised by another approach to the staging of such a festival.

It was a week-long event, the Amersfoort World Jazz Festival ((AWJF) held in the quaint town of that name in the middle of the Netherlands. The population of this medieval town is just 1,60,000, yet the jazz festival featured about 350 musicians from several countries. It was subtitled a ‘Musicians Paradise’ and there seemed to be immense opportunity for the artists to express themselves in multiple appearances during the festival.

The town of Amersfoort seemed to be all involved in welcoming visitors and making sure the event was a success. It was the 44th edition of this festival and the learning process seems to have paid dividends in terms of how this event unfolded — seamlessly and without strain on the organization. A major factor contributing to this success was the larger-than-life Festival Director, Alexander Beets who was everywhere during the week-long festivities, never looking flustered or worried about the flow of events, obviously having put in place the mechanics of organizing and delegating responsibilities to the right people. Beets has run this festival for the past 20 years and has become a master at this job.

The smooth flow translated into a very pleasant experience for the audiences that flocked to the AWJF. The end result, gauging from the happy faces was evident for all to see.

This was the canvas on which the festival was created. Several stages, nightclubs, museums, restaurants- including their courtyards, an open-air stage and even churches were involved in presenting the musical fare.

The tone was set perhaps at the festival inauguration, held in a museum. The deputy mayor of Amersfoort, Mr. Tyas Bijlholt symbolically cut the ribbon to open the festival. A compelling set of music was played by a quartet of saxophonists in a band called Aartvark (two tenors, one alto and one baritone) to an audience of invitees.

One was very pleasantly surprised to hear that the town administration had put its weight behind the festival and contributed financially to it. The central government had also assisted in this manner. This is a very wholesome community exercise where taxes are seen to be at work and one can only wish that such practice can be replicated almost everywhere in the world.

The AWJF had no big names from the jazz world, no headliners or crowd pullers. Yet, the musicians were extremely well chosen and balanced and one did not miss “A-listed” performers.

Each band contributed to the variety and style from different backgrounds and approaches, and the overall end result was a rich tapestry of diverse jazz music, from Gypsy jazz to Big Bands and almost anything in between. For even further variety, a Dutch Hip Hop artist was invited to perform. Open-ended and impromptu jam sessions were also a feature of this festival. A general mix and match of artists from various countries and bands affirmed that jazz, born in the USA, is a world voice that brings people together.

The concept of World Jazz is brilliant. Jazz organizers from several countries have reached out to each other across the continents to form a wholesome conglomerate. Thus Jazz organizers from South Africa, Sicily, Brazil, Hong Kong, Hungary, Lithuania, India, Thailand, Spain and more have seen the wisdom of such an alliance. The AWJF organizers had arranged for meetings between members of different regions, between journalists and aspiring musicians and in general encouraged and promoted an exchange of ideas and concepts for better jazz administration and cooperation, a most worthwhile exercise.

This was the background for a festival with some marvelous jazz. That will be the theme of the next installment for this festival.

Sunil Sampat is a jazz critic and Contributing Editor of Rolling Stone India. Write to Sunil at jazzwala@gmail.com