All That Jazz: Lviv Hosts Annual Music Festival Alfa Jazz Fest

Alfa Jazz Fest is an international music festival that traditionally takes place in Lviv, a city in Western Ukraine. This year, it runs from June 23 to 27.

Hromadske’s correspondent visited the festival to report on the event.

The festival lasts five days and includes more than 200 musicians from 15 countries. The concerts traditionally take place on three stages. You only need to buy tickets for one of them–the Eddie Rozner stage. This is where the festival’s headliners perform.

In addition to the three main stages, Alfa Jazz Fest also includes weekend street performances. One of them was a children’s collective, the Victor Basiuk Orchestra “Little Band.”

In addition to the concerts, musicians from different countries take part in jam sessions, master classes and autograph sessions with world jazz stars.

Every year the festival presents the Eddie Rozner International Music Prize during the Alfa Jazz Fest Awards ceremony. The prize was founded to celebrate musicians who have made a significant contribution to the development of jazz music.

On Saturday June 24, Alfa Jazz Fest hosted a discussion organized by Kyiv based independent policy think tank, the Centre for Economic Strategy (CES). The event on “How to create institutions worthy of trust” was an initiative of the co-founder of CES and the frontman of popular Ukrainian band Okean Elzy, Svyatoslav Vakarchuk.

/Translated by Eilish Hart