Our visit to Copenhagen was strategically planned in order for us to meet head on with the Copenhagen Jazz Festival. It sounded like the perfect plan: summertime, good music, outdoors, bustling atmosphere and people everywhere. July couldn’t come soon enough.
It didn’t happen quite as I imagined though, here’s why.
Jazz Outdoors?
There weren’t as many outdoor stages as we had expected, which, to be honest, was probably quite a good thing as our ‘summer’ so far in the UK had been unpredictable.
The sun did actually shine on our last day in Copenhagen and made me one very happy sunburnt bunny. Despite the shortage of outdoor stages in the touristy central area, the jazz festival line up was ridiculously endless.
For this reason our task of choosing the acts we would like to see became a very difficult one. Even harder was trying to fit them all into our already busy and short visit to the city.
There is surprisingly so much to see and do in the beautiful city of Copenhagen that one weekend is definitely not enough.
Copenhagen Royal Theatre
We decided to put the responsibility of choosing our jazz acts into a local expert, Esben, one of the jazz festival organisers. He kindly suggested that we watched Brad Mehldau Trio at Det Kongelige Teater (Royal Theatre). We couldn’t have chosen a better venue ourselves, the theatre is a spectacular building.
Aside from the jazz, I was just happy to be sitting there observing such a jaw dropping building of historical and architectural significance (that was built-in 1748). Breaking my mesmerising gaze the trio wandered on to the stage and proved beyond any doubt to be extremely talented musicians. The show was enjoyed by the all jazz enthusiasts in the audience. A special thumbs up for their jazzy version of the Beatles “and I love her”.
Jazz is such a virtuous mind-blowing music style that even if sometimes it seems like each musician is playing their own thing, it still sounds great. As you can tell by now I’m no jazz expert but I’ve been exposed to good music since early age, thanks to my big brother who is a great musician, so I unconsciously know how to appreciate good music despite not knowing where to begin with most musician instruments (does the recorder count?).
The Jazz House
After chilling out the jazz at the Royal theatre we grabbed a quick meal before heading to the jazz house just in time for their last jam session. The jazz house is this stylish little venue in central Copenhagen which we had visited in the afternoon, meeting Esben for a coffee. This time there was a duo on stage consisting of a Danish guitarist Gustaf Ljunggren and to our surprise, the drummer of trio Jeff Ballard. I don’t know whether it was tiredness or the guitar solos but I didn’t quite enjoy it as much as the Royal Theatre. Although it was definitely worth it to return to a charming venue and to end our last night in Copenhagen in style.
We missed lots of great acts at the Jazz Festival but it would have been extremely difficult to fit any more into the time we had. There is always next year.
