More important than its credentials as one of Europe’s oldest jazz festivals is the fact that JFL is credited with being the longest continually running jazz festival. Continuity. The reasons for this are manifold and have changed over the years – from the initial enthusiasm to infrastructural backing, unflinching perseverance, tenacity, ingenuity and great expertise in concert promotion to social stability and solidarity. Faced with the recent global crises, the latter two are humanity’s ongoing concerns. While not providing the answer, jazz is more than a genre or a scene – it is a force geared towards (and for the most part succeeding in) uniting, building and not dividing, a force that discovers, teaches and disseminates, that does not promote reactionary ignorance but rather struggles against it. Invariably, over and over again.

To underpin this mission, the 65th Jazz Festival Ljubljana is going big – from paying homage to the roots to embracing distinctly contemporary expressions – again with the CD Park as the festival’s main hub and the Križanke open-air theatre as a unique opening night settings.