Registration opens today for the 19th jazzahead! Trade Fair 2025 in Bremen

Registration for the 19th edition of jazzahead! at MESSE BREMEN starts today under the motto RECONNECT. Through registering, trade participants also gain immediate access to the ‘Talque’ online platform and thereby meet and exchange ideas, and be part of a very large and probably unequalled international industry network. Over the next eight months, jazzahead! itself will also instigate and organise regular virtual meetings/sessions on specific topics with the purpose of helping to maintain and bring together the jazzahead! attendee community outside the days of the trade fair itself.

Today is also the start of the six-week showcase application period: from today until 1 October, musicians and bands can apply for the 38 showcases at the world’s largest jazz trade fair in Bremen via the jazzahead! website. ‘Our aim remains to present the most exciting current developments and projects, while at the same time drawing attention to the range and diversity of European and international jazz,’ emphasises Götz Bühler, Artistic Advisor of jazzahead! ‘We are not trying to increase the number of applications any further – last year there were more than 800; what really matters is the quality. If you look at our showcase bands from recent years, you can clearly see how many of them started their international careers with us.’ jazzahead! is and remains one of the most important ‘gate openers’ for jazz musicians as upcoming headliners thanks to its high-calibre juries with festival and club bookers from all over the world.

The aim is to bring together target groups and connect all members of the jazz industry – from musicians to organisers and bookers, journalists, promoters, managers and labels. As the American magazine Downbeat put it: “When it comes to major, all-purpose jazz conference/festivals across the Atlantic, all roads have led to Bremen for the past several years.”

More than ever, jazzahead! 2025 will be focused on the idea of a sustainable and forward-looking music landscape (and music industry). ‘Green sustainability runs like a connecting thread through jazzahead!’, says Sybille Kornitschky, who has been running jazzahead! for MESSE BREMEN for almost twenty years. The fact that this year, for the first time, the focus of activities is not on a single partner country, but on a partner region under the motto RECONNECT, can also be explained in this sense. ‘We chose these three countries as partners for 2025 not only because they are so central to the further development of European jazz and its international appeal and because so much has happened there since their first individual appearance as partner countries, sometimes a decade ago,’ emphasise Kornitschky and Bühler. ‘We also see enormous potential in the geographical neighbourhood of Spain, France and Switzerland in terms of musical exchange with each other (and beyond, of course) as well as cooperation between the organisers there for ‘green touring’ that crosses borders in every respect but stays feasible in terms of geographical distance.’

In order to further promote creative exchange with the Global South, ‘Jazz from Africa’ will be a significant focus of jazzahead! for the second time in 2025 after a highly successful start at the 2024 edition. As part of the eight Overseas Showcases, the jury will select three musicians and/or bands from different countries on the continent for showcases. ‘Exchange and connection cannot be a one-way street,’ says Artistic Advisor Götz Bühler. ‘It’s about a better understanding – and curiosity about creative impulses and innovation, an essential elixir of life for jazz.’

As we send out this press release, our first in the run-up to jazzahead! 2025, we would like to announce the arrival of a new jazz specialist in our press team. Working alongside Ulrike Johannsmann for MESSE BREMEN, Jan Paersch will be the contact person for the press at jazzahead! from September. Jan is a freelance cultural journalist whose specific focus is on the jazz scene – as well as having observed and attended jazzahead! in many different capacities over several years. Describing himself as a ‘music nerd’, Paersch is from Hamburg, writes for DIE ZEIT, taz and various print magazines including Jazzthing. He regularly presents and produces programmes for Deutschlandfunk, DLF Kultur and NDR, especially about jazz musicians. His radio feature about trumpeter Ibrahim Maalouf earned him a nomination for the 2024 German Jazz Award in the ‘Journalistic Achievement’ category.

More information on this at jazzahead!

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MESSE BREMEN
Press Office
presse@messe-bremen.de
jazzahead!