Stockholm Jazz Festival
Stockholm, Sweden
October 7-16, 2016

This year's autumnal Stockholm Jazz Festival continued their tilt toward world and improvisational music in the context of a jazz festival. That said, there was an ample supply of shows to go see and hear where "jazz" was preeminent. Programming world music artists -and by so doing, highlighting the incredible diversity that exists -the contrast to other major jazz festivals that've gone pure pop alongside jazz was clearly noticeable as the Stockholm Jazz Festival continued booking important artists doing special projects in varied settings across the city: from small, intimate clubs (e.g., Glenn Miller Caf��, Plugged Records) to grand halls (the classic Konserthuset), to one of the world's finest medium-sized jazz clubs (repeat winner in DownBeat's worldwide club poll), the now-legendary Fasching (turning 40 in 2017).

Once again running over two weekends and starting on that first Thursday, somehow the festival managed to keep interest high from start to finish. Maybe if this reviewer lived in Stockholm, he might get a better idea of how music lovers spend their evenings, with or without a festival to go to. My guess is, though, that the people who show up at these concerts and clubs, well-dressed or in jeans and a t-shirt, are familiar faces that come for the music and the musicians that make that music, festival or no festival. Truth be told, to this outsider, Stockholm remains a music hub, a base where people see and hear the music passionately, physically, emotionally, maybe even spiritually. And that's not even considering the folks who travel to town, both from within Sweden and from around the world, strictly for the music.

And, in this case, once again, it all revolved around a music we call jazz, a mongrel music.

Major jazz musicians were pairing up with some of those so-called "world musicians" if they weren't in fact making direct reference to such, e.g., American saxophonist