Recap of the season intro ✨ What to expect?

A new season with a new team

Jaïr has spent the last five years working for the arts centre KAAP in Bruges and Ostend, where he organised the music section of the Bruges city festival AMOK and the ninth edition of Jazz Brugge in the Concertgebouw Bruges.

Previously, he worked in Amsterdam as a cultural journalist for De Groene Amsterdammer and Het Parool and as a music programmer for the Melkweg and the Tolhuistuin.

"A conversation with South African pianist Nduduzo Makhathini got me thinking: he argues that African jazz has traditionally been seen as the last chapter of American jazz, but that it's time to rethink that and look at new players and new countries," says Jaïr.

Highlights from the programming

The programme offers an injection of energy with artists such as South African drummer Tumi Mogorosi en Nigerian guitarist Adédèjì with his nine-strong ensemble. Also on the programme is jazz with urgency and sultry energy, with concerts more likely to be experienced standing up, such as Dishwasher_ or the sound experiments of the UK's Flock.

A special addition is the new Re:Context series on Tuesday evenings, highlighting recently published non-fiction books on music culture, with musical contributions from bassist Lara Rosseel. Andre Marmot kicks off with his book on the UK jazz explosion, legendary producer Joe Boyd comes to talk about his magnus opus, and Kevin Le Gendre talks about black music in the UK.

Evelien has always had a connection with Ha Concerts: from attending as a teenager, to an internship with ex-programmer Wim Wabbes, to a student job in communications during her jazz vocal studies at the Ghent Conservatory. She was also a regular as a production assistant at Jazzlab.

The Tiny Tunes series, concerts for young audiences from around 6 years of age, continues. What is special about this series is that the musicians do not change anything about their music for the children, but the environment is changed: the stage is lowered so that the children sit with their noses to the musicians.

Music performances for children

On weekends, there are musical performances specially designed for children. These often have more story and scenery, but are still based on music.

Next season, two productions started at Ha Concerts will be premiered - 'Echo's van de bergen' with Farnoosh Khodadadeh and 'Bries' with Anke Verslype (tba) - at the aHa! Festival during the spring break.

A special initiative is the European project Melting Pot, a collaboration between five European venues: Victoria Scene (Oslo), Jazztopad (Wroclaw), Jazzfestival Berlin, Jazzfest Saalfelden and Ha Concerts. Each venue brings a musician who then meets and plays together. This year, Ha Concerts sent the Brussels-based artist Pak Yan Lau.

Educating children

Together with its "housemates", Mais Quelle Chanson, the organisation in residence, Ha develops the educational programme. They organise camps and workshops, both in the house and on the outskirts of Ghent.

"It's important for us to get out there and reach children who often don't come here on their own," Evelien said.

Eric Smout, who has been programming at Democrazy and OLT Rivierenhof in Antwerp for many years, is responsible for the pop and rock programme at Ha Concerts. With his huge network in the international pop and rock industry, he brings big names to the venue.

Tips from the programme

Eric recommends three concerts to note in your diary:

• The Greek singer ΣTELLA, highly recommended for fans of Khruangbin or Altin Gün
• Jungle by Night, who play afrobeat but now also go broader with jazz and pop, collaborating with Spinvis and Merol.
• Jon Allen and The Luna Kings (tba), a British band full of Americana, roots and blues influences.

For €85 you can go to 10 concerts - you can take it out after about four - where you can see the 'usual suspects' as well as try something new. To help you find your way around the huge range on offer, all the concerts in the Ha'selection have been given additional labels - called 'flavours'. (discover them all).

A flavour can be a genre, but it can also be a mood or a feature of the concert night. For each flavour, you can intuitively click through to discover more similar concerts.

Season opener

To top it all off, the new season kicked off. Ha is doing this with an entire opening week, offering a taste of its full operation. But there are also plenty of exciting things to come in the spring!

Discover the full programme and be surprised by the variety and quality of what we have to offer. We look forward to seeing you at Ha!