My review of my return to Germany's Enjoy Jazz festival for the first time since 2013 was published today at All About Jazz. Reviews of: Amores Pasados (singers John Potter, Anna Anna Maria Friman and lutenists Ariel Abramovich and Jacob Heringman); Nils Petter Molvaer's latest group; pianist Julia Julia Hülsmann; Charles Lloyd's latest quartet; trumpeter Thomas Siffling; keyboardist John Kameel Farah; and Dave Holland's latest project, AZIZA, with Lionel Loueke, Chris Potter and Eric Harland.

Returning to Heidelberg and the Enjoy Jazz Festival after a three-year absence is still more than a bit like returning to a second home. Not just the same hotel (the ever-charming Hollander Hof, along the Neckar River by an old footbridge), which has not only managed to retain most of its staff from 2009-13, but still remembers and assigns the same hotel room each and every year (a lovely room facing the river and the bridge). And while the Enjoy Jazz staff has experienced a large turnover in staff, it's commitment to delivering the broadest, most attractive program possible across this year's six-week run, along with its treatment of invited guests, remains as superb as ever.

The festival's core premise remains intact. Yes, most festivals which program multiple concerts each evening may be a good way to squeeze in a lot of music over a short timeframe, but with many festival goers already moving on to the next show as soon as the last one is over, there's rarely the opportunity to really reflect upon--and truly appreciate--the show just seen...or, truthfully, to enjoy it as much as it might have been, had it been a standalone event. And so, when festival director Rainer Kern put the festival together 18 years ago, its main philosophy was, rather than running for a shorter period and squeezing a lot of shows into that time, to only program one show per night, and run for a far longer period--as much as eight weeks, though this year's edition ran for just under six.

By not streaming multiple shows on the same night, Enjoy Jazz's core premise also allows--rather than putting the shows into nearby venues (so festival-goers can easily and quickly move from one show to the next)--the festival to take advantage of the numerous venues that exist in the greater region that includes Heidelberg, Mannheim and Ludwigshafen, with venues ranging from small bars where shoehorning 100 people in is a challenge, to larger concert venues that can accommodate as many as 3,500 people

The result is a festival largely designed for the region's residents, as even choosing to attend the festival for a week means only seeing, at most, seven shows, rendering it generally less regularly visited by international media. Still, Enjoy Jazz does receive international coverage, in particular at All About Jazz, where it has been regularly reviewed since 2009, when the festival's four-day festival-within-a-festival event celebrating ECM Records' 40th Anniversary may have been the initial draw...times but after covering eleven days that year, which also included a two-day Punkt Festival in Mannheim, the festival became a regular destination until 2014, when ill health put the kibosh on returning to the event for two years, making this year's return visit--the first since 2013--a most welcome and appreciated opportunity.

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