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For a weekend in July each year, a vast warehouse complex in the port city of Rotterdam becomes home to the biggest names in jazz. Under the banner of the North Sea jazz festival, the labyrinthine, windowless space has played host to performances from the likes of Miles Davis, free jazz pioneer Ornette Coleman, singer Etta James, saxophonist Wayne Shorter and even Prince.
“We’ve had every major figure in jazz play for us over the past five decades,” senior programme manager Sander Grande says. “It’s the place where all the musicians want to hang and where audiences come to see art that is true and beautiful.”
Celebrating its 50th anniversary this year, the indoor festival has seen its fair share of late-night hangs and impromptu performances. “When it started, there were no other jazz festivals in the Netherlands,” festival director Irene Peters says. “Now we’ve grown to have more than 1,000 artists playing to 90,000 attendees.”
Founded in 1976 by jazz lover and publishing magnate Paul Acket, the festival initially took place at a concert venue in The Hague, with acts largely from the European and American jazz world playing from 4pm until 4am. Highlights included three-hour performances from Ray Charles and Count Basie as well as the Dutch composer Misha Mengelberg.
Warring jazz factions even competed across its lineups. Grande, who first joined the festival team as an intern in 1993, recalls that decade being characterised by a battle for the soul of what constituted jazz itself. “You had people from the Marsalis family who were brought up in the New Orleans tradition complaining that jazz had become too pop,” he says. “And then you had acid jazz with Gilles Peterson and Galliano, or rappers like Guru sampling jazz all on the same lineups at North Sea. That’s basically the beauty of what we do: bringing together all spectra of Black music that have been influenced by jazz and seeing what new combinations might arise.”
One place at the festival where these new musical combinations are given space to improvise and explore is the nearby Bird club, which opens after the festival headliners finish each night. Over the years, the late trumpeter Roy Hargrove became famous for turning up in the early hours to play with the likes of Erykah Badu and D’Angelo, who made some of their earliest international performances at the festival in the late 90s, while in 2011 Prince took charge of the venue from midnight onwards for three consecutive nights, inviting everyone from Seal to Carlos Santana to play until dawn.
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“Having a jam session is integral to a jazz festival, and to what this music actually is, which involves coming up with material on the spot,” says the Grammy-winning pianist and North Sea stalwart Robert Glasper. “At 1am, after your shows are done, you know the cool kids will be over there at the Bird, chopping it up and waiting for legends to drop by. It’s one part of what makes North Sea the best music festival in the world.”
Glasper has played the festival about 15 times, both as a bandleader and as a sideman with artists including Hargrove. In 2026, he will be sticking to the North Sea ethos of impromptu performances with three shows in different configurations, including one with jazz and hip-hop stalwarts Christian McBride on bass and drummer Questlove, playing all-new material.
He believes the appeal of the weekender is in catching other acts as much as getting on stage yourself. “I’ve had a lot of firsts at the festival, like going to see Herbie Hancock play with D’Angelo and his band, as well as having my head blown off by [trumpeter] Nicholas Payton’s quintet,” he says. “Even in the hotel lobby you’ll meet your heroes on their way to breakfast, which is a lot to take in when you’re a young player. I remember seeing [pianist] Mulgrew Miller just sitting, waiting for a car to pick him up, and being speechless!”
Veteran bebop pianist Kenny Barron’s early experiences of performing at the festival in the late 1970s and early 80s were also shaped by chance encounters in the hotel lobby. “I remember seeing everyone from James Brown to [Cape Verdean singer] Cesária Évora passing through,” he says. “One year after a show, I was waiting to head to the airport and the drummer Grady Tate and singer Marlena Shaw came over and asked if I wanted to play the rest of their European tour with them since their pianist had just dropped out. I changed my flight – these are the kinds of things that can happen over there.”
Preparing for her debut performance at the festival this year, American saxophonist Alden Hellmuth is hoping for her own starstruck encounters. “I grew up studying clips of masters like Joe Henderson and Kenny Garrett playing on the North Sea stage and I don’t know if I’ve properly processed yet that I’ll be joining that lineage now,” she says. “It feels like a place where everyone is at the top of their game. I’m looking forward to running over to catch [saxophonist] Charles Lloyd who is playing at the same time as us – I have to see him, since he’s such a pioneer.”
Given that jazz has never been the most profitable or youth-skewing genre in the music industry, the festival has increasingly brought in big-name R&B, soul and Afrobeats acts alongside jazz luminaries such as Chick Corea and John Zorn. “It’s not something that pleases everyone, but around 80% of our attendees return each year, which means we always need to draw in the next generation,” Sander says. “This year we have Burna Boy but we also have [fusion guitarist] Pat Metheny and [avant garde pianist] Kris Davis: it’s about striking a balance and always paying homage to music from the Black tradition.”
Although other festivals with “jazz” in their name have wholeheartedly embraced the pop influence – including Montreux and the New Orleans jazz & heritage festival, which featured headliners including Zara Larsson and Lorde this year – the organisers at North Sea are ultimately keen to keep their roots in jazz, where they first began.
“We have to reflect the changing times, but I actually believe we’re currently in a golden age of jazz,” Sander says. “You have the UK jazz scene and people like Kendrick Lamar using Robert Glasper in his records. Audiences will always seek out this music and no matter what we do, it will live on and be enjoyed for a very long time to come.”
The North Sea jazz festival is at Ahoy Rotterdam, the Netherlands, to 12 July.
