Copenhagen Jazz Festival
Copenhagen
July, 8-10, 2014

The ten-day Copenhagen Jazz Festival, with its 1,200 concerts, is maybe the largest of its kind in Europe. This number of concerts is the consequence of a unique concept. The core of the festival, with some international headliners, is a relatively small scale affair but there is a huge, still growing amount of associated venues (this year, 14 more) doing their own programming. All are coordinated and communicated by the central office of the core festival. Here the publicity before, during and after the festival is done, including responsibility for the festival app. Besides that there are also a couple of satellite/off-festivals. This is a very brief description of an extended complex network of actors and organizations.

For Danish musicians, this kind of setup and organization offers lots of possibilities to play and perform as part of the festival, as well as providing opportunities to team up with both American and other European musicians. Consequently, Danish musician do a fairly high number of gigs, spread throughout town, during these ten days. Often, they even play a number of venues in a single day, the logistics all self-organized—on bikes, in many cases.

As a visitor, you have to make choices in advance: for a certain period; for certain musicians or groups; for a certain area; the venue; the kind of music; or some combination of all these criteria. The festival app is useful, but notwithstanding you have to take good notice of Copenhagen's topography before starting. Staying in a certain area gives visitors the possibility of gaining an intimate acquaintance with summery life in town, and after returning a few times, you will become familiar with Copenhagen. Whatever choice one makes as a foreign visitor, it is advisable to rent a bike. It is the best way to move from one place to another, and Copenhagen is a distinctive, bike-friendly city. As a returning visitor you can go on to discover unknown parts and corners. This year it was places spread over the city: KoncertKirken, in the northern N?rrebro district; Kvarterhuset, in the eastern Amagerbro district, situated near the seaside; KB 18 at K?dbyen, the meatpacking district near central station; and the Betty Hansen Theatre in Frederiksberg. Frederiksberg is a special case. De facto, it appears as a district of Copenhagen, but formally it is a separate entity, a municipality of its own with nearly 103,000 inhabitants encapsulated by Copenhagen.

Three days of the festival were covered and concerts by six groups at various locations were attended: an ensemble around the famous Danish recorder player Michala Petri at Betty Hansen Theatre;