Activities
World Jazz Network
World Jazz Network is a partnership between venues, festivals and other tastemakers in the global jazz industry that aims to build bridges between audiences worldwide. We are organisers, promoters, doers, musicians, and most of all: music lovers. Every year, we meet at the World Jazz Conference, initiated by JazzNL and hosted by Amersfoort World Jazz Festival in The Netherlands. At what is often referred to by participants as “A musician’s paradise”, we welcome jazz enthusiasts, musicians, and professionals from all over the world alongside our partners and invite them to mingle and immerse themselves into the experiences these three monikers have to offer together.
Reciprocity, Transparency, Trust
Partners of the World Jazz Network collaborate based on a mutual relationship in the spirit of transparency and reciprocity. Every year, each partner presents an extraordinary talent from their respective home country at the International Jazz Laureates Festival, embedded in Amersfoort World Jazz Festival. While JazzNL facilitates these visits for both our partners and their “endorsed exceptional talents” of choice, a partnership is not without obligation: we expect and encourage partners to welcome at least one Laureate back to their own home countries per year, aiming to facilitate the ultimate world jazz exchange. This way, we all contribute to mobility for exceptional talents across the globe, through a network based on trust, shared goals and reciprocity. So effectively, for WJN Partners, a visit to Amersfoort is threefold: they get to enjoy Amersfoort Jazz Festival, meet friends old and new at the World Jazz Conference, and present and discover the latest global talent at the International Jazz Laureates Festival, all over the course of just four days.
International Laureates Festival
The International Laureate Festival is perhaps the most musical part of World Jazz Network. Integrated into the annual Amersfoort World Jazz Festival program, WJN partners present an “Endorsed Exception Talent” to an audience of peers; not just WJN members, but World Jazz Conference delegates, journalists, musicians, and music lovers from all over the world, too. These endorsed talents are assured a full hospitality program and, not unimportantly, a fair fee for their performance(s).
In 2023, the 5th edition of the Laureates event took place, for which ‘endorsed exceptional talents’ were selected from all parts of the world: Poland, South Africa, India, Australia, France, Italy, Lithuania, Thailand, Luxembourg, Spain, and The Netherlands. The Laureates Festival gives these young artists the opportunity to present their talent during full- length concerts, not only to a broad audience, but also to the attending international festival organizers and international press.