© Athina Kontou privat
Topic: Sustainability
Moderation: Raisa Siivola
Speaker: Lars Thor Jensen/ Paul Jarret/ Athina Kontou/ Dr. Reimar Volker
Content: This panel focuses on the effects of global changes on live jazz business from a musicians' perspective. The question of a more sustainable international jazz scene becomes more urgent than ever. At the same time, pandemic circumstances challenge the international exchange of artists and set focus on more local concert and booking activities.
What can we learn from this crisis, and how can we have an impact on these developments as musicians in Europe?
With our panel guests, we want to discuss the effects of global issues like covid and climate change on working and international traveling as a jazz musician. We will address the question of what we can learn from the corona crisis concerning mobility, booking and performing. And we want to talk about what international sustainable touring should look like in the future.
This event takes place locally in Bremen as part of a cooperation between Deutsche Jazzunion and the jazzahead!, as well as a cooperation between Deutsche Jazzunion and Jazz Danmark. It will be available online via livestream at the platform of the Digital Academy.
Lars Thor Jensen is project manager at JazzDanmark working with both national and international projects. The international projects are focusing on countries such as Germany and France and the Nordic countries. Working mostly with artist and talent development and international visiting programs.
Paul Jarret is a young guitarist and composer, playing mostly jazz and improvised music. He was born and raised in Paris, France. Since 2018 he is part of the musical collective Pégazz & l'Hélicon that tries to campaign on ecological topics. It released an open letter in 2020 for an ecological transition and the safeguarding of life.
Athina Kontou grew up in Frankfurt am Main and Athens. The German-Greek musician studied jazz double bass in Weimar and Leipzig and is active in the German jazz and improvisation scene. Athina Kontou lives in Cologne and is involved in the sustainability group of the Deutsche Jazz Union.
Dr. Reimar Volker studied performing arts at Hochschule der Künste in Berlin, where he was born. He holds a PhD in musicology and is currently head of the music department at Goethe-Institut head-office in Munich, where he assumed his position in October 2021.
Raisa Siivola is a long-standing producer and project manager at Jazz Finland, which is a membership organization that strives towards responsible growth of the live jazz culture and business in Finland. One of the key operations of Jazz Finland is touring, both at home and, increasingly, abroad. As a degree student of sustainable development, Siivola is all about bringing live jazz to the next level in recognizing and stripping harmful norms in fighting inequality and climate crisis.
