“We put atoms together and see what happens”

The 15th EJN Award has been awarded to Südtirol Jazzfestival Alto Adige. The festival was praised for its long-standing commitment to young European artists, its courageous and coherent artistic vision, and its ability to create meaningful musical encounters.

We spoke to its three artistic directors, Max von Pretz, Stefan Festini Cucco, and Roberto Tubaro, about their approaches.

A province as a stage

For ten days, more than 50 concerts are spread across South Tyrol, from Bolzano to the Ladin valleys and mountains. "You can explore the territory of South Tyrol while enjoying contemporary and experimental jazz in unusual venues all over the territory," says Max. "The location can be an inspiration for something new," says Roberto.

Stefan adds: "We try to merge music and places, and music becomes part of our beautiful landscapes… A bit of a slogan is to bring the music to the people, and not the people to the music."

Freedom, funding, patience

The festival has never relied on big names to draw an audience. Instead, says Max, "it's about building trust with an audience that doesn't really know anyone on the line-up. People come to our shows risking not liking it. And that's huge. Normally you go to a festival, you know at least a headline, or one or two bands."

So what makes that possible? The first condition is artistic freedom: the festival has this with almost all its venues and partners, which, Max says, lets it book "young and emerging bands that are not known even to many journalists or to other festival promoters".

Stefan explains two further conditions: "It is important that you have a certain idea of a festival, and you have to be patient as you develop it. And obviously you need to have the financial support for this, because if you are tied to audience numbers, it's a big problem." The festival wouldn't be here, he says, without the public institutions, private sponsors and partners who trusted what they were doing.

Rituals and reactions

The festival’s focus on artistic freedom has led to the invention of new formats and performance concepts. The daily Sonic Reactions gig pairs musicians who have never played together before and puts them in informal spaces like a yoga studio or music shop, where the audience experiences the reaction as it unfolds. "Put together two atoms," says Roberto, "and let's see what happens."

Kabarila works the other way, through repetition rather than collision. Led by Lukas Kranzelbinder, the trance and dance project has brought the same musicians, with dancers, to the same location for a five-hour performance every year for five years.

"We have fewer rituals in our societies now," says Stefan. “Kabarila is intended to be a kind of jazz ritual with which we oppose this trend; it’s a transcendental performance where… the audience is not just an audience, but a really essential part."

Location first

Many programmers start with the artist, but for Max, Roberto and Stefan, it works the other way round. "Always the location," says Roberto, "because the first part of the festival is to look for the locations. And then we have to match the location with the music. The same concert with the same musician in two different venues can be different, because the venue is a kind of another musician playing with the musicians."

"It's not just choosing music for one stage to play on," says Max. "We have to matchmake between the locations, the times of the day. It's really different if you book something for a late-night show in our capital city, or if you book something for a matinee on a mountain at 11 a.m. That's an artistic process that has the same value as choosing the music in the first place."

This year's 35 locations encompassed a mining museum and a trade fair hall. Some partners have hosted concerts for more than a decade; others are new, with 11 venues added this year. Either way, Max says, it’s not simply about venue hire. “We're looking for creative partners that believe in the festival and that share the artistic vision and curiosity.” He adds: "Our festival can be adventurous not only with the music, but also with the hikes that have to be done to reach the concert venue."

Young of mind

The festival is known for its commitment to young artists. For Roberto, ‘young’ isn't only about age. "It's very important to have a young musician – not just young in age, but in mentality, to be open."

Finding them means travelling to festivals and showcases around Europe, and following connections from one musician to the next. "Maybe we know one musician… and we can get to know another through musicians that we already know," says Roberto.

Social media has opened up another route. And artists come to them too. "Our festival is known for its artistic profile within the community of young European artists," says Max. "We get on average more than 25 to 30 proposals every day. We try to answer all of them."

Once artists arrive, the directors try to keep them around. "We try not to have touch-and-go concerts," says Roberto. "Maybe we do two or three different concerts, so they have time to discover other musicians too… and many times they meet other musicians during the festival and decide to play together." For him, that is the point. "A festival should be something like that. Jazz, I think, needs that, because jazz should be something that can change every time."

Max agrees: "There are many examples of bands that are our fault. Their first concert was forced by the festival, asking them, wouldn't you like to play a show with this person? And from that, albums were released, tours were played." The Kabarila musicians have since won a French touring call and will now tour as a band.

We go to them

The festival draws what Max calls "a beautiful mixed audience between local people and tourists", and where visitors once tended to catch a concert while on holiday, "more and more people are coming to South Tyrol for the festival".

Younger audiences take more effort. "It's not so likely that young people come to a jazz event which is branded as a jazz festival or a jazz concert," says Max, "so we have to go to them." Stefan adds: "People pass by and see, oh, there's a concert. Maybe they only stop for ten minutes, and they like it, and they come back." Late-night shows and more techno-leaning bands have been another way in.

"We are not organising a concert, we organise a festival," says Roberto. "It's better if you try to come to more than one concert, because it can happen that maybe one concert is not for you. They have to be curious, and discover with us everything."

Local audiences are important too. Roberto describes South Tyrol as "a place in the centre of Europe, like a bridge of two different cultures". Stefan describes a local identity that is often reduced to "yodel, knödel and lederhosen". "There are many people who do not like what we do, but many others who like it a lot," he says. "The festival is also kind of an escape for these people, so they can free their minds and see that there is also something different in this little province in the middle of the mountains."

Max thinks the balance is shifting. "The festival finds more and more acceptance within the local people, because in general, people are getting more curious towards adventurous and creative music."

Three directors, one list

Three artistic directors is an unusual arrangement, and how it works is something they are often asked about. "We are just connected to different networks and into different worlds, which also go beyond jazz music," says Stefan. "But it's one big approach rather than three distinctive approaches."

Max says each contributes what they think is interesting "from our past, from personal listening preferences, from digging into diverse scenes". It all converges into one document. "We have a huge list, which Roberto prepares every year,” says Stefan. “Everybody listens to everything, and we give some stars. We have several rounds." The proposals musicians send in go onto the list too.

The process is long, and disagreement is rare. Max puts that down to "a common idea of what the festival should sound like as a whole" or what Stefan calls "a kind of implicit knowledge". Only once bands have come through the rounds does the matching of artists to venues and formats begin.

Building on a legacy

Klaus Widmann led the festival for almost twenty years, and handed over to the three of them in 2023. By then, all three had been with the festival for more than a decade. "It was not like he left and we were falling into the cold water," says Stefan. "We already knew how things worked."

"This is the heritage we got from our predecessor," he continues. "He had lots of courage and enthusiasm about trying out new things, new formats, bringing new music, new musicians into the festival… And also during harder times when the audience was not so big, and critiques appeared. But he carried on. And so we grew up with this."

"A lot of times we talk about the curiosity, the courage," he adds, "but it's also about the huge responsibility. He was the only one responsible for this festival. And he was doing this all voluntarily – he was not paid."

For Max, the challenge was "to not just rely on the things that work and that we've done for many years, but to continue to think of new projects, new formats, new locations, also how to reach new audience segments". He speaks for all three when he says: "A huge part of this award is also Klaus. It's his."

A festival of discovery

The jury credited the festival with inspiring "programmers and artists across Europe", though the trio say they’re not often approached for advice. "I’m never asked direct questions," says Stefan. "So I think they come and observe."

What visiting programmers come for is discovery. "We're a festival to discover, where many find new bands," says Max. He is clear it runs both ways: "By going to another festival, you always learn something, or you always steal something."

Looking ahead, they are interested in exploring themes around ecology and science. "I feel we're on the right track, and we'll keep doing what we've been doing," says Max, "always trying to renew ourselves bit by bit." The aim is to "never stop inventing new formats and thinking of new ideas, of trying to get artists to know each other" and to be "an active part in the development of the jazz scene, of this music we love so much".

Photo credits:
1,4,5 G Pichler
2,3 Raw Sario