M/Jazz Festival Tour - Aarhus, Copenhagen by Maija Moira Mazanova

Text: Maija Moira Mazanova

1. Festival - Aarhus Jazz Festival

From Coltrane and late-night jams to new musical voices, creative communities and future collaboration

Only about an hour and 20 minutes by air from Riga - and sometimes for less than 30 euros - lies Aarhus. Denmark's second-largest city is a surprisingly strong music centre, where major concert halls, independent venues, educational institutions and self-organised artistic communities work together as one ecosystem.

Our journey began on 3 July, when we arrived at Aarhus Jazz Festival at the invitation of JazzDanmark and Sean-Poul de Fré Gress from BELLEROSE | Creative Agency for Music.

Coltrane in a packed Musikhuset

The first evening centred on Aarhus Jazz Orchestra: Chasing Coltrane feat. Percy Pursglove - an expansive tribute to one of jazz's most influential innovators, John Coltrane.

British trumpeter, composer and improviser Percy Pursglove joined Aarhus Jazz Orchestra and conductor Geir Lysne in bringing a contemporary perspective to Coltrane's music. The power of the big band, the refined arrangements and Pursglove's free musical imagination created a concert in which jazz history was not repeated, but continued.

The concert took place in a packed Musikhuset Aarhus, opened in 1982 and now the largest music house in the Nordic region. Over the years its stages have welcomed Ray Charles, Stan Getz, Dizzy Gillespie, Herbie Hancock, David Sanborn, John Scofield and many other musical greats. The history of Musikhuset

The city as one large stage

During Aarhus Jazz Festival, the whole city becomes a concert venue. The festival presents more than 300 concerts in at least 30 locations - concert halls, clubs, bars, museums, parks and public spaces.

The strength of Aarhus's music life lies in its diversity. Alongside Musikhuset, TRAIN and VoxHall, there are small independent stages, jazz bars and experimental cultural spaces. The compact city, its large student population, music education and cooperation between the municipality and independent initiatives create an environment where people meet easily and ideas quickly grow into shared projects.

One of the clearest examples is Institut for (X), located in a former railway freight area beside Godsbanen. Since 2009, it has developed into a self-organised non-profit platform for music, art, design, education and creative entrepreneurship. Its community includes more than 600 members, around 90 studios and workshops, creative businesses, associations and schools.

Institut for (X) is more than a place for concerts. It is a living laboratory where people shape their surroundings together, share resources and support one another's ideas.

Cumbiasound - a bridge between continents

At A-Huset, part of Institut for (X), we heard Cumbiasound, an international nu-cumbia project in which Colombian cumbia and Peruvian chicha meet reggae, Afrobeat, funk, soul, jazz and psychedelic electronics. The line-up featured Lis Flores Varela, Daniel Fridell, Veronica Giraldo and Boogie Castillo. Their concert felt like a colourful conversation between Africa and South America - rhythmic, spontaneous and made for dancing. It was music without geographical borders, where tradition became the starting point for a new global sound.

Late-night jam at HeadQuarters

Near Musikhuset is HeadQuarters, or HQ, one of the most distinctive places in Aarhus's night-time music scene. It grew out of a musicians' flat, where concerts took place in the living room, and became a public venue in 2011.

HQ is run by co-owners Ole Løhde and Amira Gluhic. Its programme moves between jazz, indie, metal, electronic music and experimental sound art; later in the night, disco, funk and soul take over. During the festival, HeadQuarters becomes the official jam-session venue. We experienced a Late Night Jazz Jam with Simon Svinding of De 4 Maver and their friends, bringing young local musicians, experienced professionals and international guests onto the same stage.

Professional connections become collaborations

The following day we met colleagues from the Nordic and German music communities: Lukas Bysted and Lars Thor Jensen from JazzDanmark, Aarhus Jazz Festival Executive Director Marie Nyeng, Marcus Bader from Musikcentrum Syd, Hank Gerth from Jazzbüro Hamburg, Tobi Kirsch from Passionate PR, and Sean-Poul de Fré Gress from BELLEROSE.

This was more than a formal industry meeting. In conversations about artist exchange, concert production and shared projects, there was a genuine wish to build long-term relationships between the Baltic and Nordic music scenes.

A jazz playground for children

At Institut for (X), we also explored the festival's children's programme, Jazzlegeplads med En Hemmelig Klub, created by artists Annabelle Nielsen and Kenn Munk Nielsen.

Children built, rearranged and reinvented their surroundings with colourful cardboard forms, while musicians responded to their movements and constructions with improvised music. The principles of jazz - listening, spontaneity and mutual response - became a game.

The project showed that a child can be more than a passive spectator: they can be a full participant in the artistic process. It was a simple and convincing example of how music education can be joined with free imagination and community building.

Sanyu - a new voice coming soon to Riga

One of my special discoveries was Oslo-based singer, songwriter and producer SANYU. Sanyu Christine Nsubuga brings together R&B, soul, jazz, improvisation, rap and spoken word. Warm vocal layers meet electronics, strong rhythms and open musical interaction.

With drummer Rino Sivathas, trumpeter and keyboard player Kristina Fransson, and double bassist Joachim Mørch Meyer, she moved between delicate calm and explosive energy. It was a deeply personal and contemporary concert, impossible to confine to one genre.

The story will continue when Sanyu joins the autumn edition of PINK NOISE Riga, from 27 to 29 November.

KOOB - freedom beyond genre

The experimental thread continued with the Berlin-based group KOOB. Its leader, Minsk-born vocalist Valeryia Delé, combines avant-garde jazz, soul, funk, experimental hip-hop and spoken word. Together with Seth Sjöström, Gabriel Fitros and pianist Wolle, she created a musically and theatrically unpredictable performance. In KOOB's music, sound, personality and the courage to take risks mattered equally.

A colourful walk above the city

Between concerts, we visited a must-see destination: ARoS Aarhus Art Museum. Its rooftop is crowned by Danish-Icelandic artist Olafur Eliasson's Your rainbow panorama, a 150-metre circular glass walkway containing the full spectrum of the rainbow.

At around 50 metres above street level, Aarhus and its bay change colour every few steps. The city becomes blue, yellow, red and violet, as if you were walking not above the rooftops, but inside the light itself.

I recommend this colourful walk above the clouds to anyone visiting Aarhus. The ARoS panorama, the creative freedom of Institut for (X), and the festival's musical diversity perfectly reflect a city where art and community cannot be separated.

We left the festival with new musical discoveries, friendships and concrete ideas for future collaboration. Aarhus showed us that a strong music city is not built only around major international names. It also needs trust, accessible stages, education, professional networks and places where people are free to experiment.

Here, jazz is more than a musical genre. It is a way of listening, collaborating and shaping a city.

The next step is already taking shape: in 2027, Latvian musicians will perform at Aarhus Jazz Festival. The conversations that began in Aarhus will continue in Riga in November, and this new partnership between the two cities is only beginning.

2. Festival - Copenhagen Jazz Festival

From Jason Moran's catharsis to jam sessions at sunrise

Copenhagen Jazz Festival is, without question, my favourite jazz festival in Northern Europe. Since 1979, it has transformed Copenhagen into one vast concert venue every summer. In 2026, more than 100 stages presented around 1,000 concerts over ten days - in clubs, concert halls, cafés, parks and city squares. This extraordinary variety makes the whole city feel as though it is breathing in the rhythm of jazz.

Jason Moran

On Monday evening, 6 July, we arrived from Aarhus just in time for American pianist Jason Moran's 9 pm solo concert in Studio 2 at DR Koncerthuset, where he interpreted the music of Duke Ellington.

I am not afraid to call it the finest solo piano concert I have heard so far. At times, it felt as though Moran was not playing the piano keys, but the strings of the listeners' souls. He connected Ellington's legacy with contemporary thinking, rhythmic fractures, silence and complete presence.

The music expanded awareness and held our attention by a fine thread, slowly leading us towards catharsis. By the end, our whole team had reached it - without hiding either tears or wonder.

The programme was connected to the 2026 album Jason Moran Plays Duke Ellington, the result of six years of immersion in the composer's music. In Moran's interpretation, Ellington is not a museum piece. His music breathes, changes and speaks directly to today's listener.

In May, I had heard Jason Moran with the Trondheim Jazz Orchestra - a magical and unpredictable journey that somehow brought us home. The solo concert in Copenhagen opened a completely different space: more intimate, fragile and direct.

After an experience like this, moving on to another concert was impossible. I could only walk home and stay with the waves of creative energy Moran had set in motion.

A city pulsing with jazz

In Copenhagen, the story is not only about jazz, but about how the city breathes with it. At M/House of Jazz, we are especially interested in the places where this music lives. During the festival I visited several very different venues. This list is legendary and has kept its importance over the years - highly recommended.

Hotel Cecil has operated in its present form since 2018, but its rooms carry a much longer history. It is located in Kvindernes Bygning, built in 1936, which once housed the Royal Danish Theatre's Gråbrødrescenen and later Copenhagen Jazzhouse. Today it is an intimate venue for around 350 people, presenting jazz alongside rock, electronic music and other genres.

A very different historical presence can be felt at the legendary Jazzhus Montmartre. Founded in 1959, it became one of Europe's most important jazz venues in the 1960s and 1970s.

Dexter Gordon, Ben Webster, Stan Getz and Kenny Drew played at Jazzhus Montmartre regularly, working with Danish musicians such as Niels-Henning Ørsted Pedersen and Alex Riel. After a period of closure, Montmartre returned to its historic address on Store Regnegade in 2010. In the intimate 86-seat room, the boundary between stage and audience almost disappears.

Galathea Kroen dates back to the 1950s, most often to 1958. It was founded by Ole Reimann, who had taken part in the second Galathea scientific expedition. Objects brought home from the voyage still shape the unusual interior. Galathea Kroen is at once a pub, restaurant, small museum and music venue, with a large collection of jazz and blues records.

A more contemporary side of Copenhagen appears at Apollo Bar, in the courtyard of Kunsthal Charlottenborg. Chef Frederik Bille Brahe opened it in 2017. Apollo is a museum restaurant and social meeting place that becomes an open-air concert stage during the festival, bringing visual art, food and music into one shared experience.

HUSET, meanwhile, has operated since 1970 and was Denmark's first cultural centre. It emerged when the City of Copenhagen gave the building to a group of hippies and artists who wanted to create a democratic cultural meeting place for young people. HUSET still relies on collaboration between volunteers, independent organisers and alternative cultural communities. Concerts, theatre, cinema and interdisciplinary projects fill its many floors, making the building feel like a vertical festival.

Jam sessions until 4 am

Copenhagen's jazz life cannot be understood without its jam-session tradition. One of the key places is La Fontaine, Denmark's oldest jazz club still in operation, open since 1959. Ben Webster, Dexter Gordon, Niels-Henning Ørsted Pedersen, Alex Riel and Marilyn Mazur have all played here. Lady Gaga once appeared unexpectedly and joined local musicians on stage. Such unplanned evenings are part of La Fontaine's character.

The history of Drop Inn is even older. It opened in 1934 as a restaurant with cabaret performances and later became a refuge for Copenhagen's bohemian community - actors, artists, musicians and politically active free thinkers. Live jazz filled the room, and the band Gasolin is said to have played secret concerts there before tours. Today Drop Inn presents many genres, but its regular jam sessions and Copenhagen Jazz Festival nights remain central to its identity.

Learning from those who shape the scene and think long term

We met the friendly JazzDanmark team and its partners. It was a particular pleasure to meet director Eva Frost and our project coordinator Lars Thor Jensen. We listened carefully, watched and learned how this seven-person team works, and how artist-friendly, open and supportive a national jazz organisation can be.

It is one of the best examples we can learn from as we build Jazz Latvia. The work is not only about delivering projects; it is also about listening to musicians, connecting people and creating an environment where collaboration can grow naturally.

Our guide through professional conversations, friendly encounters and concerts was Sean-Poul de Fré Gress, a booking agent and consultant from the Danish agency BELLEROSE. He seems to know and remember everyone, and he is genuinely excited by his work. He is an endless charge of positive energy, in whose company new friendships and unexpected adventures appear.

We also met the wonderful Sacha Kjoller from KANT. Together, she and Sean-Poul represent JAZZBYEN, a community-run digital platform and B2B directory connecting independent jazz artists, venues and organisers across the Baltic Sea region.

For emerging musicians: balticartistsindevelopment.squarespace.com

From Germany, we met Tobi Kirsch of Passionate PR, as well as Réka Csorba and Hanns-Christian "Hank" Gerth from Jazzbüro Hamburg. Among the international professionals was Sarah Weller, Head Booker at London's legendary Ronnie Scott's Jazz Club, with whom we shared dinner and the concerts that followed. Perhaps one day a Latvian ensemble will be heard in that legendary club too. We shall hear!

Connections here are not made simply by exchanging brochures. They grow through shared conversations and experiences, listening to concerts together and imagining what we might create. It is real presence, and the beginning of new collaborations.

One hundred years of jazz in Denmark

My first visit to Copenhagen Jazz Festival was supported by the Danish Cultural Institute. For the five years since then, I have returned on my own initiative to listen, experience and learn from one of Northern Europe's strongest jazz environments.

In 2026, Denmark marks a symbolic jazz centenary: Dansk Jazz 100 År.

Danish jazz experienced its first golden age in the 1930s and 1940s. In the 1960s, Copenhagen became an international jazz capital where major American musicians lived and played for extended periods: Dexter Gordon, Ben Webster, Kenny Drew, Sahib Shihab, Idrees Sulieman, Stuff Smith, Stan Getz, and bassist and cellist Oscar Pettiford. The strength of Danish jazz still lies in curiosity, openness and an international outlook - a respect for tradition without fear of reshaping it.

This history can also be felt in the audience. Concerts attract listeners of every generation. They are educated in the act of listening - not necessarily in an academic sense, but through presence, attention to nuance and the freedom to react without embarrassment.

On the way to one planned concert, it is easy to hear at least two others by chance. A walk through the design-filled city becomes an added pleasure, not simply a way of moving between venues.

I was lucky to experience Copenhagen in 28-degree heat. The royal city has no shortage of public swimming spots, green squares and small islands of shade. Everything feels considered, while the main form of transport remains the bicycle - often with a large Christiania-style cargo box in front, capable of carrying drums, a bass, a wife, a dog and the children.

I was lucky enough to travel from concert to concert in just such a box. Like a happy dog, grinning from ear to ear with the wind on my face, I glided along the cycle paths through the city.

Christiania Jazz Club - where it still feels real

A very different, but equally important part of Copenhagen's jazz world for me is Christiania Jazz Club. In the packed room, Pascal gave me a quick look, nodded and said I was on the list. It is always good to return.

The club opened in the Operaen building around 2002 and joined the Copenhagen Jazz Festival programme the following year. Christiania Jazz Club, also known as Christianias Jazzklub & Børneteater, is located near the former Pusher Street.

It quickly became a cult destination for musicians and jazz lovers: a room where concerts naturally turn into late-night jam sessions and generations of artists meet. By 2026, it has been active for almost a quarter of a century.

Here I heard one of the brightest pianists of the young Danish generation, Rasmus Sørensen. He sounded virtuosic, free and alive, playing with Felix Moseholm on double bass and American drummer Michael Ode.

Sørensen moved to New York in 2018 on a full scholarship to the Manhattan School of Music. He performed at venues including The Jazz Gallery, Smalls and Mezzrow. After returning to Copenhagen in 2023, he released Balancing Act with Kendrick Scott and Alex Claffy. A Danish Music Awards Jazz title as Musician of the Year followed in 2024, along with the Ben Webster Prize in 2025.

At the entrance, elderly gentlemen collect donations for the music - cash only, of course. That is part of the place's singular character. Backstage is a white-tiled kitchen steeped in cigarette smoke, while the music may continue until sunrise. No perfect façade is needed here. What matters is what happens between musicians and listeners.

I still managed to experience Christiania when its world of free spirits and free thinkers was visibly swirling in green smoke. Today, the area draws more tourists searching for decaf caramel lattes with lactose-free almond milk. Yet Christiania Jazz Club still feels real.

These contrasts are exactly why Copenhagen Jazz Festival is so special to me. One night, jazz can arrive as catharsis in a major concert hall; the next, it can continue until dawn in a small club at the heart of Christiania.

Seven days - around 25 concerts

Across seven festival days, I heard many very different projects that revealed the breadth of Copenhagen's music life - from global rhythms and electronics to free improvisation.

Candura brings Brazilian MPB, bossa nova and samba together with Italian disco, Turkish funk and contemporary indie pop. Tight grooves, layered vocals, keyboards and percussion created a colourful sound without geographical borders.

At HUSET's Xenon hall, Ida Duelund with Isak Schiødt represented the festival's more experimental side. Double bassist and vocalist Ida Duelund built a free collage of composition, improvisation and visual art with her ensemble. In his solo saxophone set, Isak Schiødt used minimalist repetition, breath, overtones and the instrument's keys as percussion. His music carried echoes of ambient and techno as well as Johann Sebastian Bach.

At Hotel Cecil, I heard the young Danish modern-jazz sensation OTOOTO with Sofie Birch. Birch's meditative electronics and spacious atmospheres met OTOOTO's neo-soul, modern jazz and R&B grooves. It was a dialogue between two different musical worlds, with electronics blending naturally into a live ensemble sound.

One of the festival's central figures was unquestionably Kresten Osgood, one of Copenhagen's most visible and active drummers. In my eyes, a legend. During the festival he played 36 concerts in different line-ups - almost a festival within the festival.

Faust/Pilgaard was a conversation between two vivid personalities. Maria Faust's alto saxophone and Lars Bech Pilgaard's guitar met in free improvisation, where lyrical lines alternated with raw sound textures, noise, silence and concentrated mutual listening.

The midnight concert by Spacelab - Hess/AC/Hess demonstrated the power of a long musical friendship. Pianist Nikolaj Hess, bassist AC and drummer Mikkel Hess have played together for more than 30 years. The heart of their trio often lies between the notes - in delicate nuances, silence and intuitive interplay. Spacelab's midnight concerts have become a long-standing Copenhagen Jazz Festival tradition.

And there were still many, many concerts I could not reach. Perhaps that is one of Copenhagen Jazz Festival's greatest luxuries: it is impossible to hear everything. You have to choose, surrender to unexpected discoveries and return to Copenhagen next year. This is an educational process, a lived experience and a musical education. I love this music and the people within it. See you at M/House of Jazz Riga.

CONTACT

Maija Moira Mazanova

+371 28328777
mmm@mdarbnica.lv
Creative Director & Owner, M/House of Jazz Riga Cultural Space M/DARBNICA
A. Briāna iela 9, Riga, Latvia, LV-1001

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