Hugh Masekela Photo Credit: Brett Rubin

We have just been sent the full, sixty-four page, EFG London Jazz Festival 2013 Brochure. This year is the festival’s twenty-first birthday and to celebrate, they have commissioned twenty-one new pieces from artists like Laura Jurd, Nik Bärtsch, Alexander Hawkins, Courtney Pine, Stan Sulzmann and many more.

The festival also features a smorgasbord of artists from London and abroad from Soweto Kinch, to Brad Mehldau, Wayne Shorter to Hugh Masekela (who sold out the Queen Elizabeth Hall and has been moved to the Royal Festival Hall). The Jazz in Europe aspect of last year’s festival has also been built upon with particular focus this year on musicians from the Netherlands. Looking East traces the developments of jazz in Asia, and there are a series of concerts celebrating the 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King’s I Have a Dream, which features Denys Baptiste’s Now is the Time…Let Freedom Ring! suite, Wadada Leo Smith’s Ten Freedom Summers, and more.

Artists that are close to selling out are: Wayne Shorter, Remember Shakti, Madeleine Peyroux and Snarky Puppy.

This year there are also fourteen venues that are part of the festival for the first time:

Crazy Coqs
Cre8
St James Theatre
Battersea Mess & Music Hall
Club Inégales
Cockpit Theatre
Dukes
The Others
Servant Jazz Quarters
Electric Ballroom
Hundred Crows Rising
Hippodrome
Nolias11
St Stephens

For full details, go to the London Jazz Festival Website.