The Jazz Cafe Festival is a great addition to the London festival scene – review

Music lovers will know about the Jazz Cafe, a mainstay of London’s music scene for the past 35 years. But this year, the Camden venue hosted their first music festival in Burgess Park. 

The line-up was one of the most interesting and eclectic at any of London’s day festivals, with a staggering variety of artists from the UK and around the world. 

Baby Rose, the Grammy award-winning soul singer, started off our day beautifully with the first set of her world tour. Despite the September sun, her rich voice conjured images of a smoke filled New York club. 

Buena Vista All Stars were next up on the main stage, transporting the crowd straight to Havana (including an Afro-Cuban jazz cover of Coldplay’s Clocks). 

Live acts at the main stage could be interspersed with electronic music at the Dome or the Four Corners Stage, meaning there was always a place to go and dance.

The setting at Four Corners was a little unusual. The stage was haloed by faux brutalist blocks (think Space Odyssey’s monolith) which had been left up from techno festival Maiden Voyage the day before. But this did not matter.

Giles Peterson’s three hour epic was a particular highlight. Like the festival itself, his set seamlessly moved from genre to genre, blending interesting sounds with danceable beats. 

Nils Frahm, performing his only outdoor set in the UK this year, provided a mesmerising climax to the day. 

Frahm seemed to have transported his entire studio to the main stage. Like a mad scientist experimenting with new potions, he frantically darted around the stage building layer upon layer of undulating sonic waves which crashed over a rapt audience.

At one point Frahm stopped to record the crowd making animal noises, sounds which he will use in his next composition. “Perfect,” he told the audience. “You sounded exactly like animals”. 

There were a couple of teething issues. The Plant Room – the rap and hip-hop stage – was not big enough given the popularity of acts like The Alchemist and Earl Sweatshirt. It was a real struggle at points even to get in. 

There was also a bit too much bleed across from the end of Earl Sweatshirt’s booming set to the main stage, where Frahm was starting his set with slow, building ambient sounds. 

But these are fairly minor complaints. Jazz Cafe’s first festival brought together an unusually diverse cast of artists for a festival as fun as it was interesting and imaginative. 

It was a brilliant way to bring festival season to an end and we’ll be paying close attention to the line-up for next year.