NN North Sea Jazz Festival director Jan Willem Luyken will step down on 1 November, after almost 20 years in the position.

Luyken started as director in 2006, guiding the transition of the Mojo-promoted festival from The Hague to Rotterdam.

Prior to that, he worked at Mojo as head of marketing and communication for four years.

From 1 November, Luyken will become chief commercial officer (CCO) of Mojo, where he’ll be responsible for the entire commercial policy of the Live Nation-backed company as well as the sponsoring/brand partnerships, hospitality, ticketing and marketing/communication departments.

Irene Peters, who currently holds the position of business director at the Ziggo Dome and has previously worked at Mojo, will replace him as director of North Sea Jazz.

The appointments come amid a changing of the guard at Mojo, with former CEO John Mulder making way for a new leadership team and Lowlands director Eric van Eerdenburg handing over the reins.

“After two decades, however, I felt it was time for a new challenge.”

“It was a great privilege to be the director of NN North Sea Jazz – an absolute dream job; especially for someone who came to the festival as a visitor at a young age,” says Jan Willem Luyken.

“Over the past twenty years, I have worked with heart and soul on this great festival. I am incredibly grateful to my colleagues, partners and everyone who contributed to this, for the collaboration and this unforgettable time. After two decades, however, I felt it was time for a new challenge. As CCO, I look forward to using my extensive experience at MOJO to further develop and strengthen our strategy in the field of marketing, sales and sponsorship.”

Peters started as an intern at the North Sea Jazz Festival and then worked at MOJO until her transfer to the Ziggo Dome in 2010 as Manager HR and member of the management team.

“Building the Ziggo Dome from scratch was a unique experience,” says Peters. “Together with a close-knit and hard-working team and our partners, we have ensured in a short period of time that our venue is known and praised at home and abroad for the ultimate experience for both artists and fans. More than 1,000 shows have now taken place, a great time for a new step. Becoming director of NN North Sea Jazz is a wonderful opportunity in which I can combine my experiences of the past years with my passion for music and where I started as an intern in 1997. As a loyal visitor to the festival, I look forward to the new edition every year. I am really looking forward to this wonderful job.”

Luyken spoke to IQ earlier this year about the secret behind North Sea Jazz Festival’s decades-long legacy.

The 47th edition took place at Rotterdam Ahoy between 12–14 July with 150 acts including Sting, Raye, André 3000, Corinne Bailey Rae, Masego, Sampha, Noname, Jessie Ware and Jamie Cullum.

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NN North Sea Jazz director Jan Willem Luyken has spoken to IQ about the secret behind the Dutch festival’s decades-long legacy.

The 47th edition of the MOJO-promoted event will take place at Rotterdam Ahoy between 12–14 July with 150 acts including Sting, Raye, André 3000, Corinne Bailey Rae, Masego, Sampha, Noname, Jessie Ware and Jamie Cullum.

With the Saturday and Sunday of the 30,000-capacity festival already sold out, and around 2,000 tickets remaining for Friday, Luyken expects another banner year for the event.

According to the director, the festival’s enduring success is largely due to its eclectic lineups, which draw a broad and diverse audience.

“The founder of the festival, Mr Paul Acket, was a very eclectic and broadminded guy – he was a real jazz guy, but also a smart businessman and above all, a famous concert promotor in The Netherlands,” explains Luyken. “So he decided to have jazz as the basis of the programme, as well as some big names to sell the tickets to the non-jazz audience. The first editions featured Ray Charles, Van Morrison and Chaka Khan.

“We have to make sure the jazz fans are happy but you need the big names too, to stay connected to other audiences”

“Almost 50 years later, the basic concept is still the same. But of course, the music is always on the move and I think it’s very important that we keep track of new trends and bands, so we have a very skilled and experienced programme committee team that has weekly meetings. The good thing is that we have 16 stages so we can do it all – from the classics to the contemporary.”

While the festival’s spectrum of genres has evolved over the years (see last year’s edition headlined by Stormzy), Luyken says that attracting jazz fans is an ongoing priority.

“We always ask ourselves, ‘If you take away the crossover or pop stuff, is this still a good jazz festival?’ and I think it is. It’s one of the strongest jazz festivals in the world. We have to make sure the jazz fans are happy and that they want to buy tickets but of course, you need the big names too, to stay connected to other audiences. It’s this broad setup that’s the success of the festival.”

North Sea’s wide-ranging lineups also mean the festival has no problem offering an ethnically diverse and gender-balanced bill.

“This was always the case, since the 70s,” says Luyken. “Nowadays people demand [diverse lineups] but it’s not new for us, it was always there organically. The founder’s basic philosophy for the festival was to have enough good music for all people and that automatically makes a diverse festival – when it’s a structural thing.”

“We’re the right weekend, that we can afford good headliners”

North Sea Jazz’s broad programming also means that the reported lack of available headliners isn’t an issue for the bookers, as there’s a bigger pool of A-list acts to choose from.

“Plus we’re the right weekend, that we can afford good headliners,” adds Luyken. “If you’re in the second part of June and the first part of July, you traditionally have the best chance of booking big acts.”

Taking place in an indoor venue has also proved to be an advantage for North Sea Jazz, as festivals grapple with the impacts of severe weather – though there are some downsides to it.

“We are seeing the limits of our venue,” says Luyken. “We’re not a big outdoors festival that can sell 60,000 or 70,000 tickets. We are limited to 30,000 a day.”

With the 16-stage festival unable to expand, the organisers have looked to offset rising costs in other ways.

“We have a very well-developed hospitality and VIP offering which is doing very well and we depend a lot of external funding and commercial sponsoring – which is popular for us.”

He continues: “Besides rising artist fees and the stuff we have to deal with every year, there have been no big challenges here. And I know we’re very lucky because a lot of festivals out there are struggling,” he says. “It’s a tricky business but we are in a comfortable position. And you have to work very hard and have a lot of luck to get in this position.”

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North Sea Jazz Festival, the biggest indoor jazz festival in the world, has once again sold out, this year shifting all 75,000 tickets four months ahead of the event.

Festival director Jan Willem Luyken says the strong ticket sales are a tribute to North Sea Jazz (NSJ)’s unique venue and the originality of its programming, both of which help it stand out in an ever-more crowded festival market as it enters in 41st year.

“The Dutch market is very busy, with lots and lots of festivals going on,” he tells IQ. “Big open-airs and smaller local niche festivals are everywhere.

“NSJ, however, has a comfortable position with its unique format and set-up, so we are not too much affected by that.”

North Sea Jazz, founded by Paul Acket in 1976 and now promoted by Mojo Concerts, has since 2006 taken place in the AEG-operated Ahoy Rotterdam following the demolition of its previous home, the Statenhal in The Hague. Its 2017 line-up includes Gladys Knight, Jamiroquai, Usher and The Roots, Van Morrison, Emeli Sandé, Steve Winwood, Erykah Badu, Herbie Hancock, De La Soul, Solange, Laura Mvula and George Benson.

“Big open-airs and smaller local niche festivals are everywhere”

It also, until recently, had a naming-rights agreement with a venue, North Sea Jazz Club, in Rotterdam, which closed after running into financial difficulties. Why, IQ asks, did the deal come to an end? “After a few years, we no longer felt comfortable with the musical direction in which the club was going,” says Luyken. “It was drifting away from the festival more and more, so we decided not to renew the collaboration.”

As an indoor festival, like Montreux Jazz in Switzerland and the new EFG London Jazz Festival, NSJ is protected from the sort of severe weather that disrupted several European events last summer – but having 75,000 people under one roof can, Luyken explains, present its own set of problems.

“The biggest challenge is crowd control,” he says. “The audience has to be able to move freely between the 14 stages, and we are less flexible with square metres compared to our open air-colleagues!”

While NSJ’s line-ups over the years arguably include a number of performers with only a tenuous link to jazz music, Luyken says a focus on other, related genres has always been at the heart of the festival’s booking philosophy. “Since the first edition in 1976, the festival has always been about jazz music and related genres such as soul, blues, funk, R&B, hip hop, world music, etc.,” he explains. “Paul Acket, the founding father of NSJ, realised back then he had to bring in popular headliners to sell the tickets, so he booked acts like Ray Charles, James Brown, Van Morrison and Chaka Khan…

“This is still, after 41 years, our formula. We’ll always stay true to our roots, but, of course, we have to stay up to date, book hot new acts and make sure to stay attractive to new audiences and follow up on trends. Luckily, with 14 stages we are able to do it all.”

“We’ll always stay true to our roots, but we have to stay up to date and book hot new acts”

The greatest challenge in filling those 14 stages, Luyken says, is rising artist fees – a view shared by many respondents to IQ’s European Arena Report 2016.

“To get the best line-up for the available budget is an ongoing puzzle,” he says. “Artist fees are getting crazier every year, so the biggest challenge is to keep the tickets affordable for our audience.”

One solution to the artist-fee conundrum, suggests Luyken, is to capitalise on the growing Dutch economy to persuade brands to part with more sponsorship money. “The economy is finally picking up,” he concludes, “which brings new sponsorship opportunities.”

North Sea Jazz Festival 2017 takes place from 7 to 9 July.

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