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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.
Øyunn – jury
The Norwegian Copenhagen-based drummer, vocalist and rapper delivers expressive and dynamic concerts, and is described as a bold songwriter with a flair for catchy hooks.
At the end of 2025 she released her second album I Know U Can Do It – a fresh blend of breakbeats, expressive vocals, analogue synths, groove-driven energy and rap. In recent years she has appeared on festival stages such as Roskilde Festival (DK), Kongsberg Jazz Festival (NO), SPOT (DK), Festspillene i Nord-Norge (NO), Jazzy Colors (FR) and Vossajazz (NO).
In 2022 she made her debut as a filmmaker with the audiovisual work Aspects at the Ultima Festival. The following year she released the music as a live album and went on to win several awards – Danish Music Awards 2024 as New Jazz Name of The Year, and the Tivoli Jazz Prize Visionary Award for “her genre-defying and unique voice as a composer, drummer and vocalist”.
As a drummer she has collaborated on record and live with names such as Bugge Wesseltoft, Nils Frahm, Efterklang, Sam Gendel and Trondheim Jazz Orchestra.
Her artistry is marked by a strong presence, rhythmic precision and a willingness to explore new forms of expression.
Piotr Orzechowski ‘Pianohooligan’ – jury
Since his much-acclaimed triumph in Montreux Jazz Solo Piano Competition (Switzerland, 2011), this pianist, improviser, and composer has remained one of Poland’s most exciting music artists.
His projects provoke questions and redefining the stereotypes of the creative act and stage performance. Each new album becomes a major event that carries a non-obvious message across genre boundaries and reaches all the continents in its concert version.
Pianohooligan’s individual musical language spans across stylistic boundaries, from his home base in improvised and classical music to avant-garde and electronics. An uncompromising deconstructor of Krzysztof Penderecki’s works, he has also been an artistic partner of NOSPR (Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra) and the Sinfonia Varsovia, stars of the world’s jazz scene such as Randy Brecker, Avishai Cohen, Carlos Zíngaro, as well as such great classical contemporary and electronic music personalities as Philip Glass, Adrian Utley of Portishead, and William Basinski, to name but a few. Most of all, however, Orzechowski focuses on his original solo works, which defy simple genre classifications.
Pianohooligan’s fourth, most recent solo album, Critique of Swing in Two Parts, is a simultaneously warm-hearted and analytic look at the phenomenon of swing, which questions its earlier, common interpretations.
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