The Thing with James Blood Ulmer at Moldejazz

Moldejazz 2015 is over and here is a video from one of the highlights from the festival:
The Thing with James Blood Ulmer!

As usual the weather was shitty and the music was great! The festival economy has been pretty strained the last years, and after this year we might see a change, since they have decided to end the outdoor concerts. These concerts were supposed to draw huge audiences that probably wouldn´t turn up for the regular jazz concerts and finance the other stuff happening (and perhaps get some to attend other concerts they didn´t mean to visit). They have had Bob Dylan, Van Morrison, Antony, Leonard Cohen and Stevie Wonder (to name a few) but the tactics have failed these last years (due to weather, programming, higher costs and so on), and D´Angelo not showing up for his concert Friday last week due to disease (on extremely short notice) was probably what did it for the festival.

Perhaps we will get a more focused festival the years to come. Might be a good thing in the end.

This year I attended The Thing + Ulmer concert (what power!), Zanussi 5 (please check out this band!) , Trondheim Jazz Orchestra with Espen Reinertsen doing a "Forgaflingspop" project (sweet!) and artist in residence Mats Gustafsson´s tribute to the Norwegian skier Petter Northug (crazy!).