World Jazz Network is proud to welcome Igor Butman Music Group to their family. Established at the World Jazz Festival in 2016 by JazzNL and IKS Cultural Consulting South Africa, WJN has been incorporated in Amersfoort Jazz Festival since the beginning. It seeks to facilitate partnerships in the global jazz community in an informal setting for promoters and musicians from across the globe. Collaboration, after all, is key for all of us to thrive.

Therefore, World Jazz Network is happy to also welcome Russia’s largest jazz enterprise to the Sena Performers International Jazz Laureates Program, exchanging the finest jazz talent Russia has to offer with the rest of the world. While the partnership between Igor Butman Music Group and World Jazz Network is new, their friendship is not. JazzNL founder Alexander Beets featured in a panel at IBMG’s Jazz Across Borders, Russia’s largest jazz conference, in November of 2020: an online event attracting more than 10,000 attendees over the course of just two days. More recently, both IBMG founder and chairman Igor Butman and Amersfoort World Jazz Festival director Alexander Beets featured at A Night in Anzio, produced by fellow WJN partner Sylwester Ostrowski.

And yet, the latest addition to the World Jazz Network has more to bring to the table: since 1999, Butman has been at the helm of an extensive organization that currently includes no less than 10 jazz festivals across Russia as well as the world-renowned Butman Club in Moscow. Butman is no stranger to the international stage himself, having performed and toured across the globe steadily for decades. World Jazz Network and Igor Butman Music Group are confident that this new collaboration will help even more musicians to accelerate their international careers.

We are excited to present the first Russian laureate, piano prodigy Oleg Akkuratov, at the hybrid International Jazz Laureate Festival in Amersfoort in October, helping our audiences discover the jazz of tomorrow – wherever you are in the world.