European Festival Awards: Cluj-Napoca’s Jazz in the Park festival shortlisted as the Best Small Festival

One of Romania’s biggest jazz festivals, Cluj-Napoca’s Jazz in the Park, amassed votes from the regular public to be enlisted among the finalists of the Best Small Festival category at the European Festival Awards this year. Winners will be announced at the awarding gala in Groningen, the Netherlands, on January 18, 2023.

A return to the biggest stage of awards, Jazz in the Park won the same category back in 2019.

At least 17,500 spectators flocked the "Romulus Vuia" Ethnographic Park in Cluj from September 1 to 4, 2022, for the festival's one-decade anniversary despite the unpleasant rainy weather for an endless spectacle of jazz music headlined by artists like The Comet is Coming, Asaf Avidan, Avishai Cohen Quartet, and more.

“We have been around for ten editions. Yes, we want to go and do jazz events in other cities across Romania, but it won't necessarily be called Jazz in the Park. Jazz in the Park is Cluj exclusive, and our main focus is to bring everybody from all around the country to this city and not go to them with the festival,” Alin Vaida told Romania Insider in an August 2022 interview ahead of this year’s edition.

Additionally, Arsenal Fest (Serbia), Jazzopen Stuttgart (Germany), Liverpool Sound City and Portobello Live (England), Roadburn (the Netherlands), Stars in Town (Switzerland), Szene Openair (Austria), Unsound Festival (Poland), and Ypsigrock Festival (Italy) are also competing in the same category to win the first award after two years of forced hiatus due to the pandemic. Full shortlist here.

(Photo source: Jazz in the Park/Facebook)