The Finnish Jazz Federation hosts the 15th edition of the annual Young Nordic Jazz Comets band competition/showcase night in Helsinki. The Finnish rep in the Nordic showcase event in September will be the winner of the YNJC competition that takes place on May 17, 2014.
The final showcase concert will feature six jazz acts from all the Nordic countries and also Greenland/Faroe Islands/Åland.
Apply now for the Finnish competition here!
Application:
You can apply with only one band. The lineup of the band should mainly consist of Finnish musicians under the age of 29. Please add a note in the "sample" field if you don't have your music online, saying whether you'll provide music samples on mp3s by e-mail (info@jazzliitto.fi) or on CD by mail (Suomen Jazzliitto ry, Hämeentie 17 b 62, 00500 Helsinki).
Application period:
Please leave all the material on Friday, January 31st, 2014, the latest. The board of the Finnish Jazz Federation will process the applications, and we'll let all the bands know personally about the results before the end of March.
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Young Nordic Jazz Comets started in 2000 and has since been a recurring event on the Nordic jazz scene. The main purpose is to create attention to new jazz talents, giving them the opportunity to meet their future audience and to play at professional venues.
Intill 2012 this event has been organized as an annual competition. Starting in 2012, the countries involved in YNJC, wanted to focus more on the aspect of promotion, and not the competitive elements.
The idea is to create a club night/venue event for young aspiring jazz talents at one of the key jazz venues in one of the Nordic countries each year. The goal will be to attract as much attention as possible from key people within the jazz community in the Nordic countries/the rest of the world, be it jazz clubs, festivals and the music press. In other words, this event has networking and promotion as its main purpose. There are many reasons for this shift in focus, the obvious being that it’s difficult (or impossible) to have a fair competition in music. But strict competition-rules can also put quite a few unnatural boundaries on presenting the best of young Nordic jazz. The growth of new talents is continuing to expand in all the Nordic countries, and new band combinations are often made across national borders. Having nations compete against each other therefore goes against this trend.