It is the crack of 1 p.m. and I am sitting in the ballroom of the Saltsjöbad resort (Ystad Saltsjöbad), the Baltic’s gently lapping presence a football field away. Through the lingering brain blur of jetlag, I was being pulled magnetically into the four-day Ystad Jazz Festival, which officially kicked off with a duo concert by Swedish bassist Lars Danielsson and Polish pianist Leszek Możdżer. The music was sturdy and fine, but a comment by the wry pianist seemed to lay out some unintended festival mandate: “You know, the heart is halfway between your head and your butt.”

Nicole Johänntgen performs at the Ystad Jazz Festival 2025 | Photo: Josef Woodard

The happy medium and directives of heart-head-butt in the Saltsjöbad ballroom — with the commanding veteran jazz/soul singer Catherine Russell and the young and affirmational-spirited dynamo alto saxist from Zurich, Nicole Johänntgen. Musical goods went big time in the main concert venue of the picturesque 19th century Ystads Teater, across the boulevard and train tracks from the Baltic. What better place to take in a dense thicket of jazz and related musical matters for several August days and nights?

Ystad (pronounced OO-stad, by the way) is a lovely and historic seafront town in Southern Sweden, about an hour’s drive from the Copenhagen airport over the epic Øresund Bridge. Resort-seekers in Sweden and elsewhere know of its summering wiles, and culture hooks include its role as the site of the crime saga Wallander (with Kenneth Branagh in the BBC series). Swedish bard August Strindberg wrote of the place, in his novel Inferno, “It is an old pirates’ and smugglers’ haunt, in which exotic traces of all parts of the world have been left by various voyagers.” Jazz can now be counted as one of those exotic traces.

And now, it is home to the increasingly well-respected and 16-year-old Ystad Jazz Festival, directed by the wondrously lyrical pianist Jan Lundgren — an Ystad resident and ACT Records artist. Lundgren is a handsome and deceptively easy-going Swede, who handles his high stress gig with the greatest of apparent ease, and manages to bring gracious artistry to his festival performances.

This year, the director/pianist’s stage time moments involved his ear-friendly power trio Mare Nostrum (with Italian trumpeter/flugelhornist Paolo Fresu and masterful French accordionist Richard Galliano) — check it out here — and in a Bill Evans tribute with the legendary and fierce-eyebrowed Swedish bassist Anders Jormin and German drummer Wolfgang Haffner. Both were more heart/head-oriented items, leaving the butt impetus to funkier stuff on the festival bill.

More Nordic pianism found its way into a different historic space one evening, when gifted pianist Mattias Nilsson went solo and went deep in the 12th century S.ta Maria Kyrka (church), a towering centerpiece of Ystad’s old town quadrant. He wended, improvisationally, from the Beatles’ “Fool on the Hill,” through Swedish folk songs, Francis Lai’s “Live for Life,” and other adventures, all tinged with that certain melancholic je ne sais quoi we often hear in music of the north.

Ystad has become a northern landing spot for jazz in the sweet sunny south of Sweden, beckoning for return visits. This was my fifth time here, and not my last. Now, reality check is in tow, and it’s back to the pulse of life in our own resort town on a south-facing coast.

Charlottenlund, at the Ystad Jazz Festival 2025 | Photo: Josef Woodard

On the Music Academy Beat/Wrap-party

Music Academy of the West final performance of the summer season | Photo: Phil Channing

Parting is bittersweet sorrow, but we’ve grown accustomed to the drill: the enriched classical music parade in the first eight weeks of summer, courtesy of the Music Academy of the West (MAW), folds up its Big Top in early August. Last Saturday, the 78th annual festival and internationally respected educational program climaxed with a sweepingly fine and satisfying unveiling of Mahler’s epic Symphony No. 3 at The Granada Theatre.

And the night before, the dimensions and functions were much humbler but also impressive on many levels. The Lobero Theatre was an auspicious venue for Friday’s Duo & Song Winners Recital Finale program, with winners of MAW competitions for duos and solos showing their superb skills at a tender and proto-career-launching age. This type of live program lends a taste of the dedicated work and formative virtuosity carrying on in the Music Academy practice and lesson rooms.

Oboist Jamie Yoojin Lee and pianist Lydia Ai-line Yu | Photo: Phil Channing

Highlights of the Lobero Friday included oboist Jamie Yoojin Lee and pianist Lydia Ai-line Yu’s take on Antal Doráti’s spicy Duo Concertante for Oboe and Piano” and the glorious-toned baritone Jack Burrows, with Tony Stauffer on piano, taking on Ravel’s Don Quichotte à Dulcinée — yet another stirring entry in this summer’s Ravel-centric programming. After intermission, the captivating and subtle cellist Mia Kim Bernard, in duo with pianist Amber Ginmi Scherer, gave music of Ernest Bloch and Brahms’ Sonata No. 2 for Cello and Piano in F wondrously expressive form and exacting gestures — large and small.

Officially, the Academy doesn’t spring back to life until next June, but its still-young Mariposa series of concerts offers four prime concerts at Hahn Hall worth calendar-marking in the meantime: the Prometheus Quartet (Friday, October 17), Hanick & Meijer (Wednesday, November 19), Lark, Roman & Meyer — being Tessa, Joshua, and Edgar — (Thursday, January 8), and the New York Philharmonic String Quartet (Thursday, April 2). Be there and there and there and there.

Baritone Jack Burrows, with Tony Stauffer on piano | Photo: Phil Channing

TO-DOINGS:

Okonski performs at SOhO on August 20 | Photo: Courtesy

The Santa Barbara Bowl is the place to be, once again, for fans and curiosity seekers where My Morning Jacket (MMJ) is concerned, with a return engagement on Wednesday, August 20. Happily and thankfully, MMJ has made the Bowl one of its regular stopping places on tour, and their big, open-hearted and strange music feels right at home in our beloved al fresco venue. Led by quirkily charismatic singer Jim James, the New Southern Rock — or anti-Southern Rock — band’s latest album, the tenth in a discography going back to 1999, is, well, is.

Jazz of the worldly sort makes its way into Santa Barbara only rarely in the lean summer months, which makes the debut arrival of noted jazz star Robert Glasper, at the Lobero Theatre on Saturday, August 16, a special, not-to-miss occasion. Glasper’s Black Radio III tour, touching on the keyboardist-leader-concept-man’s home brew of jazz harmony, R&B/hip hop elements and surprise sonic additives, promises to appeal across demographic taste borders. Listeners beyond the jazz cognoscenti are welcome. (See preview story here).

SOhO’s docket this week also checks in with the jazz muse, on the heels of Saturday’s Glasper encounter. The band Okonski, hailing from Ohio, cooks up an easy-to-love sound with chillness in the melodic and atmospheric veins. On 2023’s Magnolia and the forthcoming album Entrance Music, bandleader-composer Steve Okonski plays a funky-toned and not-quite-in-tune upright piano, evoking retro jazz club vibes, and is joined by drummer Aaron Frazer and bassist Michael Isvara “Ish” Montgomery. The three musicians are also known for their work with retro-soul band Durand Jones & the Indications, but boast a personal and evocative vintage-y sound under his own bandleader shingle. They are joined by Bay Area singer-songwriter Mae Powell on Wednesday, August 20.