When the Cities Begin to Swing. There is a particular hour in Europe when autumn becomes music!!!
It comes after sunset, when the last light rests for a moment on the rooftops of Prague, when Paris begins to sparkle along the Seine, when London slips into its evening rhythm and the streets grow quieter—but behind the doors of clubs, restaurants, theatres and concert halls, another Europe begins to breathe.
This is the Europe of jazz.
A Europe of double basses and brushed cymbals, of saxophones rising into the night, of piano chords falling like rain against old stone walls. A Europe where music travels without passports, crossing borders as naturally as autumn wind moves through the trees.
The Autumn–Winter Jazz Season of the EU Jazz & Blues Festival has once again opened this musical passage through the continent, bringing together artists, audiences and cities in a season that promises not simply concerts, but encounters. And perhaps this is what jazz does best: it turns geography into emotion.
Prague becomes a chord. Paris becomes a melody. London becomes a rhythm. And somewhere between them all, Europe becomes one enormous jazz club.
Prague: A City Made for Improvisation
Prague in autumn has always seemed to belong to another century. The old buildings gather the fading afternoon light. The narrow streets become darker and more mysterious. The towers rise above the city like the vertical lines of an enormous musical score, while the Vltava carries reflections of bridges and lamps through the evening. But beneath this historic beauty there is another Prague—a Prague that begins to emerge after dark.
It is found behind the doors of intimate jazz clubs. The room is small. The tables are close together. Someone whispers before the first note. A glass touches a table. A musician adjusts a microphone. The drummer looks toward the pianist. The bass player places one hand upon the strings. And suddenly the entire room changes.
This is the magic of the historic Prague jazz club: the feeling that the audience is not merely listening to music, but sitting inside it. The walls seem to remember every melody that has passed through them. Every improvisation leaves something behind. A saxophone can make the room feel larger. A piano can make it intimate. A bass can make the old city beneath your feet seem to move. Prague does not need to explain why jazz belongs here. The city already knows.
The European Autumn Begins to Swing
The new season arrives at precisely the moment when Europe begins to turn inward. Summer festivals have given way to theatres, clubs and concert halls. Outdoor stages disappear, but the music becomes closer. The audience sits nearer to the musicians. The sound acquires another kind of intimacy.
This is the season of warm rooms and cold streets. And across Europe, the Autumn–Winter Jazz Season brings together musicians whose languages may be different, whose traditions may be separated by thousands of kilometres, but whose music speaks with the same essential vocabulary: rhythm, freedom, imagination and feeling.
From contemporary jazz to hard bop, from European improvisation to blues, funk and electronically coloured modern sounds, the programme becomes a portrait of Europe itself—restless, diverse and constantly changing. At its best, a jazz season should feel like a journey. This one does.
Paris: The Night Belongs to the Voice
On Saturday, October 3, Paris adds another chapter. At Jass Club Paris, the Tana Jazz Night creates the atmosphere of an intimate gathering rather than a conventional concert. An indoor jam session becomes a meeting place for musicians and listeners, with a tribute to the extraordinary composer and vocalist Cécile McLorin Salvant and guest vocalist Flore Benguigui.
There is something especially appropriate about celebrating Salvant in Paris. Her musical imagination lives comfortably between eras. She understands the history of the vocal tradition, yet she refuses to live inside it. Her voice can be theatrical, fragile, ironic, dramatic and deeply human—sometimes within the same phrase. A tribute to such an artist naturally invites improvisation. The songs become doors. The musicians walk through them. And the evening becomes something unpredictable.
That is the beauty of a jam session. Nothing is completely fixed. A melody may begin in one place and finish somewhere else. A familiar phrase can suddenly become new. Paris has always understood this kind of transformation.
Across the City: Hard Bop with Dinner
Not far away, another Parisian evening takes a different shape. At Le Melville Restaurant, the Olivier Robin Quartet brings the muscular language of hard bop into an atmosphere where music and dinner share the same table.
There is something wonderfully European about this tradition. The concert does not have to be separated from life. People arrive, talk, eat, drink, laugh—and then a saxophone begins to play. The room changes. Conversation becomes quieter. The rhythm section establishes the pulse. And suddenly the restaurant is no longer simply a restaurant.
It becomes a jazz room. Hard bop has always carried that particular physical energy: the strong backbeat, the expressive horn, the dialogue between piano and rhythm section. It is music with shoulders, feet and heartbeat. Paris understands it instinctively.
London: Wojtek Mazolewski and the New Polish Pulse
Earlier in the season, on September 3, Cadogan Hall in London became another important stop on this European journey when Wojtek Mazolewski and his quintet appeared as part of the Autumn–Winter Jazz Season. Mazolewski belongs to a generation of Polish musicians who have never regarded jazz as a closed room. His music opens windows.
The double bass provides the foundation, but around it everything is possible: funk, rock, electronics, contemporary improvisation and the unpredictable energy of collective performance. Founded by Mazolewski, the quintet has become one of the significant formations in Polish jazz of the 21st century. Its sound reflects the remarkable transformation of the Polish jazz scene—a tradition deeply rooted in artistic seriousness, yet increasingly comfortable with popular culture, rock, electronic music and experimental forms.
Mazolewski’s story is inseparable from the Tri-City music scene and from Pink Freud, the influential ensemble that became one of the catalysts of the Polish jazz revival at the beginning of the century. But his artistic journey has never remained within one circle. His collaborations have reached toward musicians such as Pete Wareham, Tim Berne, Dennis Gonzales, Tomasz Stańko, John Zorn, Peter Kowald, Mikołaj Trzaska, Marcin Masecki, Wojtek Waglewski, Lech Janerka, Fisz and Emade.
Each encounter has added another colour. Each collaboration has widened the horizon. And that is perhaps the central idea behind Mazolewski’s music: jazz does not become weaker when it meets another genre. It becomes larger.
The Double Bass at the Centre of the Storm
There is something poetic about a double bassist leading a musical revolution. The instrument is physically enormous, yet its role can be almost invisible. It stands at the bottom of the harmony, beneath the melody, beneath the improvisation, beneath the architecture of the composition. But without it, the music loses its ground.
Mazolewski understands that power. His double bass does not simply accompany. It directs, challenges, responds and sometimes seems to pull the entire ensemble forward. The result is music that can feel both carefully constructed and completely spontaneous. A rhythm appears. A guitar or electronic texture enters. The drums intensify. The bass moves. And suddenly the composition seems to become a living organism. That is contemporary European jazz at its most compelling—not a rejection of tradition, but a conversation with it.
Jazz Beyond the Jazz Club
Mazolewski’s work also reflects a larger cultural transformation. Jazz has moved far beyond the traditional club. It appears in theatres, cinemas, festivals, radio programmes, galleries and public spaces. It enters conversations with film, dance, literature and contemporary art.
Mazolewski himself has composed music for film and theatre and has hosted the long-running Polish Radio Three programme Jazz fajny jest. His music has travelled across Europe, South America and Japan. The journey is therefore not simply geographical. It is cultural.
The old definition of jazz—three musicians in a smoky club playing standards until midnight—is only one chapter of the story. The new European jazz can be electronic. It can be orchestral. It can be theatrical. It can be aggressive. It can be delicate. It can borrow from rock without becoming rock, from funk without becoming funk, from classical music without becoming classical. Its only real obligation is to remain alive.
Olivia Peevas: The Woman Behind the Musical Map
Every large musical journey has someone who imagines the map before the audience sees it. For the EU Jazz & Blues Festival, that figure is Olivia Peevas, Director and Artistic Director, whose vision and organisational energy stand behind the Autumn–Winter Jazz Season.
Her role is not simply to place artists on stages. It is to create connections. Between cities. Between musicians. Between generations. Between established traditions and new musical ideas. A European concert season of this scale requires more than artistic taste. It demands persistence, diplomacy, imagination and an extraordinary amount of invisible work.
There are schedules to coordinate, musicians to bring together, venues to prepare, audiences to reach, cities to connect and countless details that never appear in the programme. But when the lights go down, none of that is visible. The audience sees only the beautiful result. A musician walks onto the stage. The first note sounds. And Europe begins to sing.
That is the achievement behind Peevas’s work: transforming organisation into atmosphere. The machinery disappears. The music remains.
A Season Without Borders
Perhaps this is what makes the Autumn–Winter Jazz Season so important. Europe is often discussed through its borders, languages and histories. Jazz offers another way of seeing it. A saxophone player in Paris can communicate with a bassist from Poland. A pianist in Prague can speak through harmony to an audience that arrived from another country.
A London concert can echo later in Paris. A melody can cross the continent faster than any train. Jazz creates a Europe without walls. Not because differences disappear, but because differences become part of the music.
The European jazz tradition has always been strongest when it allows many voices to exist simultaneously. There is no single European sound. There should not be one. Instead there are thousands of accents. Polish. French. Czech. British. Italian. German. Nordic. Balkan. Mediterranean. And all of them can enter the same improvisation.
When the Night Becomes the Music
Imagine Prague after midnight. The streets are almost empty. Autumn air moves between the old buildings. Somewhere, behind a door, a drummer is still playing. A bass note arrives from the darkness. A saxophone answers. In Paris, another club is closing. In London, the last audience members are leaving Cadogan Hall. In another European city, musicians are still sitting around a table, talking about music and waiting for the next train.
This is how a jazz season really exists. Not only on posters. Not only in programmes. Not only in concert halls. It exists in the spaces between performances. In conversations. In friendships. In unexpected collaborations. In the memory of a particular solo. In the sound of a trumpet heard from the street. In the moment when an audience suddenly becomes completely silent because the musician has found something that cannot be explained.
Europe, Let the Music Continue
Autumn has only just begun. The trees are changing colour, the evenings are becoming longer, and across Europe the stages are filling once again with musicians carrying their instruments through the night. Prague glows beneath its historic skyline. Paris opens its intimate clubs. London answers with its great concert halls.
Poland sends forward another generation of musicians who refuse to separate tradition from modernity. And behind this extraordinary movement, Olivia Peevas and the EU Jazz & Blues Festival continue to build a European musical landscape in which jazz and blues can travel freely—from one city to another, from one imagination to another.
Perhaps the true beauty of such a season is that nobody knows exactly what the next night will sound like. Jazz does not promise certainty. It promises possibility. And as Europe moves deeper into autumn, that possibility is everywhere. Behind a door in Prague. Under the lights of Paris. Inside Cadogan Hall. At a restaurant table. In a jam session. Between a double bass and a drum. Between a melody and silence. The continent is listening. The musicians are ready. The night is waiting. And Europe is alive with jazz.
By Akrile Betrricean, Donaled Shotelend, Lauren Wulff
