KrakowInformer.com

Krakow Summer Jazz Festival

The Summer Jazz Festival in Krakow is organized in the Piwnica pod Baranami. Although it has been a part of the Krakow jazz scene for only 12 years, the Summer Jazz Festival's tradition is more than 50 years old.

The Summer Jazz Festival is organized in the Piwnica Pod Baranami. Since its establishment in 1956, the Piwnica pod Baranami wasn't just a cabaret of spoken sketches – it was a den of the young and creative jazz artists. Their future was to take them to different places, but Krakow remains their birthplace.

Among the artists performing at the Piwnica pod Baranami were such greats as Krzysztof Komeda – who would later write the famous “Rosemary's Baby” score – Wojciech Karolak, Andrzej Kurylewicz, Jan Ptaszyn Wróblewski, Tomasz Stanko or Jaroslaw Smietana.

The 40^th anniversary of the Piwnica Pod Baranami was a good occasion to make jazz a more official thing – and so the Summer Jazz Festival was conceived. Now, each year, for about a month – usually in July – Krakow becomes Poland's Jazz capital.

The 2008 Summer Jazz Festival in Piwnica pod Baranami took place between July 6^th and August 3^rd. The highlights were certainly the New Orleans' Jazz Sunday, with over 10 hours of jazz music in various places across the city, including the Main Square and the Kazimierz, as well as the Krakow Jazz Night. The 2008 Krakow Jazz Festival was also graced by a performance of Branford Marsalis himself, who played at the Krakow Philharmonic on July 7^th.

The 2009 Summer Jazz Festival in Krakow will take place between July 5^th and July 31^th 2009. The Summer Jazz Festival's line-up isn't known yet, but be sure the Krakow Informer will keep you informed.