EUROPE JAZZ NETWORK
EUROPE JAZZ NETWORK
As the only representative from Serbia, the Belgrade Jazz Festival has been a member of the prominent international jazz family – Europe Jazz Network, for twelve years. The association has 214 members from 39 countries (festivals, clubs and concert halls, independent promoters and national organizations) dealing with the production, promotion and support of music, contemporary jazz and improvisations in music with an exclusively European dimension. The mission of EJN is to encourage, promote and support the development of the creative music sector in Europe and to create opportunities for artists, organizers and audiences from different countries to meet and communicate.
The Belgrade Jazz Festival management actively participates in the regular activities of the EJN, exchanging creative ideas with colleagues from other countries. In 2015, the Head of the Creative Arts Department of Belgrade Youth Center, Dragan Ambrozić, took part in the panel discussion “Focus on South-East Europe” during the EJN annual conference in Budapest. Milica Ševarlić, the Head of Promotion Department of Belgrade Youth Center took part in the Staff Exchange program of EJN in 2017. For ten days, she was part of the team at the prestigious international event Jazzfest Saalfelden in Austria, where she shared professional experiences, ideas, and practices with her colleagues. As part of the same exchange program, Patxi Berradre, from the Jazz Festival in San Sebastian, visited the Belgrade Jazz Festival in 2022. Ševarlić and Ambrozić also participated in annual conferences in Ljubljana (2017), Lisbon (2018) and Novara (2019). Due to the coronavirus pandemic, the 2020 conference was not held, but delegates gathered online and held an election assembly, as well as several virtual panel sessions, and in 2021, the annual meeting was held in the Estonian capital, Tallinn. In 2022, a new conference with a slightly smaller format and a narrower thematic focus, called Beyond Europe, was launched. The focus was on the Balkan region, the local organizer was Jazz Fest Sarajevo, and the delegates of the Belgrade Jazz Festival were artistic director Vojislav Pantić and Milica Ševarlić, who was also the program host. Dragan Ambrozić represented the Festival at the annual EJN conference 2022, hosted by the capital of Bulgaria, Sofia, in 2023 in Marseille, France, in 2025 in Bari, Italy, in 2026 in Cologne, Germany and Vojislav Pantić at the annual conference held in 2024 in Ghent, Belgium.
The Belgrade Jazz Festival proudly promotes the European jazz sensibility, and the development of cooperation with foreign colleagues through the EJN network brings insight into the Old Continent's current jazz trends through numerous conferences, seminars and showcase programs leading to the selection and presentation of several outstanding artistic discoveries to the local audience.
