BBC Young Jazz Musician competition returns in November

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    Xhosa Cole, 2018 BBC Young Jazz Musician (second left), with his quartet at the Watermill Jazz Club, Dorking. Photo © Brian O'Connor

    The biennial BBC Young Jazz Musician competition returns for its fourth edition in November 2020, aiming to “support and celebrate the wealth of young talent on the UK jazz scene”.

    The final will be a collaboration between the BBC and the EFG London Jazz Festival, which will host it. It will be broadcast on BBC Four, the television channel whose music programming now often seems to fall to reruns of Top Of The Pops and only rarely dips into the BBC’s rich jazz archive.

    From the initial entries, up to 25 semi-finalists will be selected, out of which five young performers will forward to the final. The finalists will have the opportunity to play with Nikki Yeoh’s Infinitum, led by British jazz composer and pianist Nikki Yeoh and featuring her rhythm section of siblings Michael Mondesir (bass) and Mark Mondesir (drums).

    Entries for the competition are now open, with a deadline in mid-July, and full details on how to apply can be found on the BBC Young Musician website.