The final event of the 2nd phase of the Jazz France Balkans Network took place in Dijon from May 12 until 15, 2026, gathering together jazz musicians, journalists, researchers, jazz educators, students, festival producers, municipal representatives, diplomats and more.
Two-day conference about jazz started on May 14 in the Old Council Chamber, with the cordial welcome of Ms. Lydie Pfander, municipal advisor delegated to Europe, partner cities and international relations, and continued with the inspiring inaugural lecture of Mr. Andrew Read, director of Jazz in Europe.
We are pleased to publish Mr. Read full speech on our website, with his kind approval.
“Let me start by saying a genuine thank you – to the City of Dijon, to the organizers, and to the Jazz France Balkans network for the invitation. You’ve created something here. A space where music, dialogue, and cooperation actually meet. And that’s not nothing. That’s pretty rare. So thank you for that.
Now, today I want to talk to you about two things. Two ideas that are going to guide everything I share. The first is resilience and disruption – the idea that jazz has always changed, and that the business around it has to change too.
The second is collaboration, integration, and equity – the idea that resilience is only possible when both sides of the business are in balance, and when there’s a level playing field for artists, managers, labels, platforms, and public institutions. Everything I touch on today connects back to those two pillars. Keep them in mind.
Here’s why these themes aren’t abstract for me. Peace, education, women in jazz, the media – these aren’t topics I’ve read about in a report somewhere. They’re part of the real life of music. They’re connected to each other, all of them. And the media plays a particularly connecting role in that – circulating ideas, voices, and narratives across borders in a way nothing else quite does.
If we’re talking about women in jazz, we might as well ask: when do we start seeing more women in political leadership? Because that’s where many of the rules are made. But I’ll come back to that.
I’ve been in music for four decades. I started in Melbourne in the 1970s. Since then I’ve gone through performance, recording, touring, producing, and working on the business side of music. All of it. And what that’s taught me is that great music only reaches its potential when it’s supported by collaboration, integration, a level playing field, and a solid commitment to those principles. I genuinely believe that. A healthy scene should be musician-first, built from the bottom up – not a top-down, purely business-driven system.
So let me set the theme for today. Jazz has always been more than a genre to me. It’s a language of exchange, trust, and connection. A way of turning conflict, difference, and change into shared creativity. That’s why this conference matters. And that’s why resilience, disruption, collaboration, and equity are going to be our guides for the next little while.
PILLAR 1: CHANGE AS THE ENGINE OF JAZZ
I want to touch on something that should be obvious but still catches many people off guard: Jazz has always been about change. In fact, when you look at it, the music business as a whole has always been about change. Change in the music itself is driven largely by creativity and social change – that’s true for all good art forms. However change in the music business is driven largely by technology, and that shapes how people discover, access, and most importantly consume music. It always has. It always will.
Looking specifically at the very essence of jazz, the genre is almost impossible to define except to say it is based on a constant flow of change and adaptation. Jazz emerged from constant cross-cultural mixing. It has never a fixed thing. It will always in motion. Some people move with it. Some don’t. That’s fine. But the music doesn’t wait.
Let me give an example – people have been saying “jazz is dead” since at least the 1940s. The press claimed Jazz “died” when Parker played bebop. Jazz “died” again with Ornette Coleman and Eric Dolphy Free Jazz album: John Tynan stated this in his zero star review in downbeat. My father saw it die when Miles Davis’ Bitches Brew came out. And I have it on good authority that jazz also “died” in the 2000s when the North Sea Jazz Festival programmed Phil Collins!
Every major shift creates a wave of panic. Every single time. But music never actually stops evolving. It just keeps going. And so does the business around it.
Jazz is always moving, and so is the business. Here’s the line I want you to hold onto, because I’ll come back to it: “It doesn’t matter where jazz goes, as long as it takes the tradition with it.” That’s the heart of the first pillar I want to speak about – Change is the engine of jazz.
So, now let’s look at the business. Over my career, I’ve seen many disruptions come and go. I witness the CD “kill” the LP (only to see the LP kill the CD 20 years later). I saw Pro Tools change the way we make records, largely moving the creative process out of the studio and into the bedroom. I witnessed the rise of the internet and Napster destroying the perceived value of recorded music only to see Steve Jobs come along and “fix It” setting the value of music at 99 cents per track. I then saw Spotify come along devaluing it further with “all you can eat” for ten bucks a month. But each time, the industry and the music adapted and survived – even if not always in ways artists liked. And now we’re on the edge of the next major disruption: AI.
AI is changing how music is created, promoted, discovered, and monetized. This is not a one-off event. It’s part of the same pattern we’ve seen again and again. So here’s the reframe I want to offer: instead of treating disruption as a crisis, look at it instead as just an ongoing feature of the music business.
I’d like to tell you about a good friend of mine who now runs a sync licencing company in Norway. She used to be an exec at EMI and has the minutes of a crisis meeting at EMI about Napster and what to do about it. She has a sentence highlighted spoken by the companies CEO – “Gentlemen, I don’t think we need to worry about this internet thing – I’m sure it’s going to blow over”
Just like jazz itself, the business has to keep listening, adapting, and improvising. That’s resilience. And in a moment I’m going to talk about how we make that change work fairly for everyone – because that’s where the second pillar of what I want to discuss comes in.
RESILIENCE THROUGH COLLABORATION
So if disruption is a constant, the the logical answer is resilience. And resilience comes from creative change. Not from digging in and refusing to move – resilience is not about staying the same. It’s about finding new ways to stay true to the music while adapting to new conditions. That’s a very different thing. And this “don’t fear it, embrace it” message? That’s classic jazz thinking. Improvisation is literally about responding to the unexpected. Not avoiding it.
The same mindset applies off-stage – in how we run labels, festivals, streaming platforms, and indeed the media.
But here’s where it gets important. We can only be resilient when both sides of the business are in balance. And when I say “both sides,” I mean the creative and the business side – artists, managers, labels, publishers, promoters, festivals, venues, streaming platforms, media, and public funding bodies. All of them. That balance doesn’t happen by itself. It comes from collaboration, integration, equity, a most importantly a level playing field, and even more importantly a shared commitment to those principles.
A level playing field is the most important of those conditions. So what does a level playing field actually mean to me? Here’s how I think about it. First — and this is fundamental — creativity and innovation are not just at the top of the pyramid. Never have been. The next important voice in jazz is probably not coming from the most well-resourced place in the room. This means the gatekeepers of this industry need to be genuinely open and inclusive — not just in theory, but in the decisions they make every single day.
And funding? Funding needs to reach the entire value chain, not just the people who are already visible. When money only flows to the top, the whole ecosystem starves.
The media has a role here too — they need to be adventurous in their coverage, to take risks on artists and scenes that aren’t already established.
And education — this one’s close to my heart — education needs to include not just how to play music, but how to be a musician. Those are two very different things. One gets you through the conservatory door. The other gets you through a career.
I want to give you a concrete example of this. I recently interviewed Dave Stapleton, CEO of Edition Records, as part of the Jazz in Europe Label Feature series. And I asked him: “If you could break the industry and rebuild it any way you want, how would you do it?” And you know what? That was the only time Dave was lost for words. And I have known him for a long time! But I understood why – There is a lot broken that needs to be fixed, so where do you start. But what we both agreed on was this: we need organisations to support a level playing field in this business. And we meant the entire business, not just the creative side. That was the common ground. We need it in the record business: fair deals, fair royalties, for labels and indie artists both. We need it in the live side business: fair fees, fair access to booking opportunities but also fair funding and support. And we need it in the media: fair representation, fair access to airplay, fair coverage across genres, regions, and voices. This is not “nice to have.” This is necessary if we want a resilient, sustainable industry.
“We need to remember that without music, we don’t have a music business.”
That’s it. Resilience comes from creative change and from structures that are fair, integrated, and collaborative.
Thank you all for listening and thank you for the opportunity to allow me to bring you these thoughts here in Dijon.”