Melting Pot is a project that has been part of Jazztopad for many years and been present at four other important venues and festivals in Europe. Every autumn, improvising artists who have never played together are thrown into a metaphorical melting pot and have to find a common musical language.

This experiment, like balancing on a rope, requires openness and trust. This project symbolizes one of the most important elements of improvised music: its universality as a communication tool. The artists are selected by the artistic directors of partner organizations based on mutual trust. Very often, the improvisers participating in the project have no idea who they will perform with, but they know very well how to navigate in a new environment and rapidly develop ideas and motifs. Sometimes music is created ad hoc, other times composition elements appear.

This year, Jazztopad invites the Warsaw accordionist Zbigniew Chojnacki to the Melting Pot project. He is an improviser who eludes genre slots and transforms his instrument into a fluid, shape-shifting machine of sounds. The Austrian festival Jazzfest Saalfelden has selected Beate Wiesinger, a band leader and composer who likes unusual rhythms and sweeping pop melodies. It is the penchant for catchy meldies that characterizes her formation echo boomer – the name of the group refers to the sociological term meaning the generation born in the years 1970–1990. Belgian saxophonist and clarinetist Rob Banken has been chosen by the Handelsbeurs from Ghent. For the past five years, the artist has been ubiquitous on the city’s creative stages, playing with bands such as the Flat Earth Society and the JMJ World Jazz Orchestra and many smaller local formations. Banken runs the HAST quintet, a thoroughly contemporary band that serves a fusion of Radiohead-inspired melodies, Jim Black-style twisted rhythms and rich cinematic landscapes on the 2019 album Elegy. The invitation of the vibraphonist Evi Filippou to the project by Jazzfest Berlin is a very good decision. The artist is hyperactive on the jazz and improvised music scene of the city, where musicians from all over the world live and work. Her improvisations are melodic and delight with the technique of playing the vibraphone, whether in raw post-bop or in highly demanding compositions by Iannis Xenakis.