We’re about to leave behind us the first three months of the year, and we can look back on a lot of great concerts, with a large number of audience and quite a few sold out shows. It has been fun! Some highlights have been Zoh Amba Trio, Eivind Aarset 4tet, Chris Potter Quartet, Mary Halvorson and her Amaryllis band, the Craig Taborn/Tomeka Reid/Ches Smith Trio, just to mention a few of them. Perhaps the most rewarding moment came last weekend with the three-day celebration Large Unit’s 10-year anniversary. A festival of music, dance and impressions, and an audience from 18 to 81 years old. That was a euphoric weekend.   

We got loads to look forward to in the next few months as well. On April 21st, Bill Frisell and Thomas Morgan comes to town, two musicians of the highest order. On the 29th of April, we celebrate International Jazz Day by arranging a night called “Mediterranean Jazz”, where we embark on a musical journey around the Mediterranean Sea. Two concerts and a jam are on the program that night. May also has a lot of highlights. We got two sold-out shows with Brad Mehldau Trio, and a sold-out show with Billy Cobham’s Spectrum 50 Band. Anja Lauvdal will perform her commission work for last year’s Kongsberg Jazzfestival, “Cosmic River”, and we will close our regular season with a release concert with Norwegian sensation LILJA on the 13th of May.

The program for the Fall-season is also about to click into place, and we will start to release concerts within a month or so. This will be the last artistic program that our Managing Director Jan Ole Otnæs will oversee before he steps down, and Øyvind Larsen will take over on September 1st.

As always, if you’re in Oslo, please check out our program and pay us a visit. We can guarantee a night with great music at Nasjonal jazzscene – Victoria!

With love from Oslo, Norway