The Vilnius Jazz Festival is the oldest annual jazz festival held in Vilnius

Vilnius

Vilnius is the capital of Lithuania, and its largest city, with a population of 560,190 as of 2010. It is the seat of the Vilnius city municipality and of the Vilnius district municipality. It is also the capital of Vilnius County...

, Lithuania

Lithuania

Lithuania , officially the Republic of Lithuania is a country in Northern Europe, the biggest of the three Baltic states. It is situated along the southeastern shore of the Baltic Sea, whereby to the west lie Sweden and Denmark...

. It provides a broad perspective on contemporary trends in jazz from all over the world. Since its founding in 1987, Vilnius Jazz has earned a reputation of a radical avant-garde festival oriented towards originality and limit-stretching creativity. The festival crosses and expands the stylistic boundaries of jazz and free improvised music

Free jazz

Free jazz is an approach to jazz music that was first developed in the 1950s and 1960s. Though the music produced by free jazz pioneers varied widely, the common feature was a dissatisfaction with the limitations of bebop, hard bop, and modal jazz, which had developed in the 1940s and 1950s...

 by presenting joint projects with musicians from academic, ethnic music, rock

Rock and roll

Rock and roll is a genre of popular music that originated and evolved in the United States during the late 1940s and early 1950s, primarily from a combination of African American blues, country, jazz, and gospel music...

 and industrial music

Industrial music

Industrial music is a style of experimental music that draws on transgressive and provocative themes. The term was coined in the mid-1970s with the founding of Industrial Records by the band Throbbing Gristle, and the creation of the slogan "industrial music for industrial people". In general, the...

 backgrounds.

The festival usually offers a 3-4 day programme of concerts, workshops and jam session

Jam session

Jam sessions are often used by musicians to develop new material, find suitable arrangements, or simply as a social gathering and communal practice session. Jam sessions may be based upon existing songs or forms, may be loosely based on an agreed chord progression or chart suggested by one...

s featuring up to 10 different groups. The 24th edition of the Vilnius Jazz Festival will be held on 13-16 October 2011. Festival founder and producer - Antanas Gustys.

Artists and sponsors

The Vilnius Jazz Festival programme features international jazz talent alongside the best of Lithuanian talent. The festival has included artists such as The Zawinul Syndicate (USA), Sonny Simmons

Sonny Simmons

Huey "Sonny" Simmons is an American jazz musician.He grew up in Oakland, California, where he began playing the english horn. At age 16 he took up the alto saxophone, which became his primary instrument...

-Oliver Lake

Oliver Lake

Oliver Lake is an American jazz saxophonist, flutist, composer and poet. He is known mainly on alto saxophone but also performs on soprano saxophone and flute....

 Quartet (USA), Courtney Pine

Courtney Pine

Courtney Pine CBE is an English jazz musician. At school he studied the clarinet, although he is known primarily for his saxophone playing. Pine is a multi-instrumentalist, also playing the flute, clarinet, bass Clarinet and keyboards...

 Group (UK), Billy Cobham

Billy Cobham

William C. Cobham is a Panamanian American jazz drummer, composer and bandleader, who has called Switzerland home since the late 1970s....

 Band (USA), Arthur Blythe

Arthur Blythe

Arthur Blythe is an American jazz alto saxophonist and composer. His stylistic voice has a distinct vibrato and he plays within the post-bop subgenre of jazz.- Biography :...

 Quartet (USA), Steve Lacy

Steve Lacy

Steve Lacy , born Steven Norman Lackritz in New York City, was a jazz saxophonist and composer recognized as one of the important players of soprano saxophone....

 (USA), Leroy Jenkins (USA), Viacheslav Ganelin (Israel), Otomo Yoshihide (Japan), Fred Frith

Fred Frith

Fred Frith is an English multi-instrumentalist, composer and improvisor.Probably best known for his guitar work, Frith first came to attention as one of the founding members of the English avant-rock group Henry Cow. Frith was also a member of Art Bears, Massacre and Skeleton Crew...

 (UK), Carlos Ward Quartet (USA), Defunkt (USA), Django Bates (UK), Cinematic Orchestra (UK), Iva Bittová

Iva Bittová

Iva Bittová is a Czech avant-garde violinist, singer and composer. She began her career as an actress in the mid 1970s, appearing in several Czech feature films, but switched to playing violin and singing in the early 1980s. She started recording in 1986 and by 1990 her unique vocal and...

 (Czech Republic), Myra Melford

Myra Melford

Myra Melford is a jazz pianist and composer. In recent years, Melford has begun playing the harmonium as well as piano.Melford grew up in the Chicago area...

 Quartet (USA), Cuong Vu

Cuong Vu

is a jazz trumpeter and vocalist.Born in Saigon, he left Vietnam with his family at the age of five in 1975, settling in Bellevue, Washington...

 Trio (USA), Willem Breuker Kollektief (NL), Marc Ducret Trio (FR) and many others. Many international projects have been organised through close collaboration with international cultural institutions and foundations, such as Goethe-Institut

Goethe-Institut

The Goethe-Institut is a non-profit German cultural institution operational worldwide, promoting the study of the German language abroad and encouraging international cultural exchange and relations. The Goethe-Institut also fosters knowledge about Germany by providing information on German...

, British Council

British Council

The British Council is a United Kingdom-based organisation specialising in international educational and cultural opportunities. It is registered as a charity both in England and Wales, and in Scotland...

, Swedish Institute

Swedish Institute

The Swedish Institute is a Swedish government agency with the responsibility to spread information about Sweden outside of Sweden. It exists to promote Swedish interests, and to organise exchanges with other countries in different areas of public life, in particular in the spheres of culture,...

, Pro Helvetia, US Arts International, and the Japan Foundation

Japan Foundation

The was established in 1972 by an Act of the Japanese Diet as a special legal entity to undertake international dissemination of Japanese culture, and became an independent administrative institution under the jurisdiction of the Foreign Ministry of Japan on 1 October 2003 under the "Independent...

.

Cultural significance

Attracting an audience of around 7000 each year, Vilnius Jazz has played a formative role for several generations of jazz fans. It has also helped develop local players who have then moved onto performing in other European venues and international jazz groups. Vilnius Jazz is also inextricably linked with the development of a distinctive Vilnius jazz school. An important cultural signpost in Eastern Europe, the festival nurtures and promotes the living tradition of improvised music in Lithuania. In 2005, it became a member of the Europe Jazz Network.