Mission

Jazz has a long tradition in Austria, dating back to the 1920s, and has produced numerous internationally successful musical personalities and formations:

Joe Zawinul, Hans Koller, Vera Auer, Fatty George, the Erich Kleinschuster Sextet, Michael Mantler, the Vienna Art Orchestra, Werner Pirchner & Harry Pepl, Karlheinz Miklin, Wolfgang Puschnig, the Jazzwerkstatt Wien and Graz, Viola Falb and many more. More than ten educational institutions (music universities and conservatories) throughout Austria continuously train numerous young musicians who decisively enrich Austrian and international musical life through their creative work.

In the years 1997-2009 the "Hans Koller Prize" existed in numerous categories (Musician/Album/Newcomer of the Year, "European Jazz Prize", Audience Award, etc.). The discontinuation of this jazz prize due to professional changes of its organizer Mathias Rüegg has created a clear gap in the perception of jazz and the appreciation of the artistic achievements of many musicians in Austria.

The term "jazz" should be defined broadly and include not only idioms of jazz history (traditional, swing, bebop/cool, hard bop/free, fusion etc.) but also improvised music in general as well as border crossers of the genre in the direction of classical/contemporary music, folk music/world music, dance/electronic, soul/funk and rock/pop. Accordingly, the overall spectrum also includes a wide variety of casts, formal structures and crossovers with other art forms (literature, dance, film, ...).

The transcultural principle inherent in jazz – whose emergence is inseparably linked to transatlantic colonial history – should be particularly emphasized insofar as artists who have come to Austria from all continents and have their center of life here are invited to participate in the Austrian Jazz Award.