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Competition history
Founded in 1976, the International Contest of Young Jazz Ensembles Jazz Juniors has always been strongly entwined with the history of Polish jazz, since it is at the Jazz Juniors where the most famous Polish artists – such as Leszek Możdżer, Krzysztof Ścierański, Zbigniew Wegehaupt, Marek Bałata, Niedziela and Pospieszalski brothers, and New Presentation, Walk Away and Miłość bands – made their first steps. This was years ago, yet Jazz Juniors still belongs to the spearhead of jazz events, whose winners make their presence ever more visible on international music stages. Enough tomention that this is the competition that recently allowed the discovery of such personalities and bands as High Definition, N.S.I., Levity, Bartosz Dworak, Paweł Kaczmarczyk, Piotr Orzechowski “Pianohooligan” and Tomasz Chyła Quintet.
Since 2012 Jazz Juniors has efficiently developed its operation focused around the idea of international exchange, focused on the promotion of competition winners. Thanks to the recommendations and involvement of members of the international jury, Jazz Juniors winners receive an opportunity to go on international tours, shine brightly on the dazzling stages of great festivals all around the world, and set up cooperation with prestigious labels and artistic agencies that offer a perfect start and international promotion to young musicians.
Jury of the Competition
Nils Petter Molvaer – chairman of the jury
Born on the island of Sula, Molvaer was introduced to jazz already in his earliest childhood by his musician father. The local club scene kindled his enthusiasm for playing the instrument. However, rather than accepting the local horizon as his own, he left his homeland at age nineteen in search of new types of sound. He began by taking up studies. With time he became one of the most influential musicians in the Scandinavian jazz scene.
Performing in the Masqualero quintet was an important stage in his career. The quintet, named after a piece by Wayne Shorter, took off in the early 1980s and consisted of: Arild Andersen, Jon Christensen, Tore Brunborg, Jon Balke, and, naturally, Nils Petter Molvaer. It was as a member of Masqualero that Molvaer recorded his first album for the Munich-based ECM label, which was tantamount to entering the international music scene. Molvear soon gained a reputation as an excellent sideman much sought-after for his splendid technique, flexible imagination, great intuition and sensitivity. He performed with numerous artists in Norway and elsewhere. In the 1980s and 90s, he played, among others, in the bands of Jon Eberson, Marylin Mazur, Rita Marcotulli, Dennis González, and Lars Danielsson. The diversity of the music he performed with these and other bandleaders gives an impression of his versatile talent.
The real breakthrough, however, came slightly later, with his first fully original album Khmer, released in 1997, which may well be considered as a turning point in Molvaer’s career. Hailed by reviewers as ‘surely the most unusual album ever released by ECM’, it represents a daring combination of jazz improvisation and club culture, blending powerful breakbeat drive with sampling and the colours of the musician’s own instrument. With this release, the Norwegian trumpeter proved that by drawing on current musical trends and vogues one may create a visionary work which is at the same time rooted in a specific period and much ahead of its time. In the creative decades that followed, Molvaer never turned back from the path he had taken on his debut album.
With charming agility and genuine bravado, his successive albums have combined Nordic precisions and chill with the hot sounds of ethnic music, at the same time boldly exploring ever new areas of electronic sound. As if by the way, Molvaer has repeatedly proved that the combination of live instruments with production work opens up virtually unlimited possibilities. While remaining original and recognizable, the artist has never ceased exploring new ground, thus becoming a major source of inspiration for successive generations of artists. His impact on the improvised music scene is discernible to this day in recordings by even the youngest jazz musicians.
Solveig Wang – jury member
Solveig Wang is a Norwegian multi-instrumentalist and artist based in Oslo, who has made her mark on both the Norwegian and international music scenes with her vibrant electronic palette. Playing synths, clarinets, electronics, and vocals, she brings a vivid, exploratory energy to every project she takes part in—working at the intersection of jazz, pop, and electronic music.
She is a founding member of the trio Nothing Personal, whose music balances meticulously crafted pop hooks with free improvisation, electronic experimentation, and hypnotic live visuals. Their second album, The Diary of Nothing Personal (Braveheart Records, 2024), received glowing reviews in Norway, hailed as “a new way of making Norwegian pop music” (Bergens Tidende) and praised for its originality and boldness.
Beyond her work with Nothing Personal, Wang is a member of the acclaimed soul collective Fieh and collaborates closely with Norwegian Grammy (Spellemann) award-winning saxophonist Harald Lassen, contributing synths and clarinet to his highly praised 2025 release Rik.
Her versatility and curiosity allow her to move fluidly between genres, weaving together improvisation and songcraft, experimentation and groove. With a strong artistic identity and an ear for the unexpected, she continues to explore new musical frontiers.
Soheil Shayesteh – jury member
Soheil is an audio-visual composer, violinist, and Kamancheh player based in Amsterdam. His interest in exploring the sound of the Kamancheh with live electronics has led him to develop audio processing units which are unique to the instrument. He weaves intricate and textured soundscapes with his layered drones, creating a hypnotic effect that seems to slow down time and transport the listener to a meditative zone.
Soheil has developed a new vocabulary for the Kamancheh, extending it with live electronics and audio-reactive visuals that go beyond the traditional way of playing the instrument, enabling him to immensely expand the spectrum of the Kamancheh’s sound. He creates heavily layered textures, processing them all from the live signal of the Kamancheh.
He generates dramatic soundscapes that are then crushed by crispy beats.
He appreciates the unpredictable nature of live performances and has incorporated this quality into every processing unit he has developed. This allows him to interact with and control the live electronics and Kamancheh-driven audio-reactive visuals regardless of any fixed timeline and based on the changes in the spectrum of the sound and the playing style of the player.
As a composer, Soheil has achieved significant recognition for his work, including winning the first prize at the ‘Tera de Marez Oyens’ award with his audio-visual composition ‘Zha’ for kamancheh, live electronics and visuals.
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