EFG London Jazz Festival launch

12 September 2016

Althea Efunshile

Good evening - it’s wonderful to be here at the launch of the 24th EFG London Jazz

Festival!

I look forward to this event all year! It heralds the turning of the seasons: Autumn

brings shorter days, longer evenings, the colours of the fall - and jazz.

For ten days, our London nights will come alive, warmed with music from some of

the brightest stars of the international jazz scene, both established artists and those

on the rise.

The EFG London Jazz Festival is now London’s largest indoor music festival – and a

globally recognised event.

This year it anticipates a live audience of 100,000, with more than 2,000 artists and

300 gigs in 50 venues across 20 boroughs, plus a broadcast audience of three million.

This mammoth event is produced by Serious, one of the Arts Council’s regularly

funded National Portfolio Organisations.

Over the years, Serious have helped developed a worldwide reputation for the

Festival, bringing a huge range of talent to London.

World-famous performers like Courtney Pine alongside emerging talent like

London’s Sons of Kemet and Hampshire-born trumpeter Laura Jurd.

There are free events, family events, and platforms for young talent to shine, such as

the National Youth Jazz Orchestra at Rich Mix.

The Arts Council has been a partner of the Festival since its inception in 1994. Jazz

is, and will continue, to be a priority for us. As a child, I grew up in a household that

was always infused with jazz! I love jazz because it’s inclusive and democratic, and a

profoundly expressive art form that reaches across audiences, and across the barriers

of class, race and language.

And now as never before, we must be committed to ensuring we find ways to

communicate and understand each other, to bring people together, to promote

tolerance and push back against the encroachment of any language of hatred.

Art and culture will be crucial to this, as it always has been in progressive societies.

Music goes beyond words, and jazz, which is the least prescriptive and the most

flexible of forms, takes music to new horizons, to a space where we can all share and

enjoy art, no matter who we are, or where we come from. Jazz is for everyone.

At the Arts Council, as well as our growing investment in jazz in our current National

Portfolio, we’ve also increased the value of our Grants for the Arts awards for jazz by

more than 250% since 2012

In the current year to date, jazz projects have received more than £417,000 through

Grant in aid

In the last two financial years we have awarded £1.2m of strategic touring funds to

jazz related projects – a tenfold improvement on the £120,000 invested in the

previous two years.

Our long term, strategic approach to the form has been shaped by many

conversations between the sector and my colleagues, including Denys Baptise who

many of you will know.

Our approach will mean a stronger future for Jazz; greater resilience, a stronger

focus on talent development and progression, and new audiences.

Organisations like the National Youth Jazz Orchestra and Tomorrow’s Warriors are

being supported through our Catalyst programme to help bring in donations and

sponsorship.

While Jazz Re:freshed is taking our talent to an international stage, with

International Showcasing funding.

Organisations like the National Youth Jazz Collective are doing exemplary work

building lasting partnerships with schools and music education hubs, offering

excellent training for the next generation.

But we want to see more progression routes for children and young people.

That's why I’m delighted that Serious delivers a range of learning, participation and

artist development programmes such as Take Five – with an impressive list of

alumni, many of whom will be gracing Festival stages in November.

I thank Serious for their role as ambassadors for UK jazz, reflecting the diversity of

our scene here in their programming, and communicating this to international

producers many of whom visit the Festival.

Thanks to Serious and other organisations, the United Kingdom is a strong

international voice in jazz. It’s a voice with which we talk to the world and invite the

world into conversation.

It’s a powerful voice, saying that London is open - and that we as a nation are open.

Open to art, to people, to culture, to business; able to influence and open to

influence. Open to life, and what binds us together as humans.

I look forward, as ever, to hearing what that voice sounds like this year.

Althea Efunshile

12th Sep 2016