European Jazz Workshop

EJW presents: The Art of Stealing | Oslojazz 2025

Composers of all kinds and from all eras have always borrowed from each other. Some borrowings are plain as day and unmistakable, while others may be well hidden.

In the world of jazz, popular songs from Broadway were borrowed, and eventually pop music began borrowing from jazz and classical: Donald Fagen and Keith Jarrett ended up in court, while Eric Carmen became filthy rich from All By Myself — ironically, most of the song was by Sergei Rachmaninoff. Far back in history, secular music was smuggled into sacred works by clever composers. Good old Bach received a fugue theme from King Frederick the Great of Prussia as a challenge; Anton Webern took a fragment of Bach’s vast output and created his own version, and then Sofia Gubaidulina made a violin concerto from Webern’s version. Bob Dylan created Make You Feel My Love from the opening of Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony. Duke Ellington’s Peer Gynt music was banned from radio play on NRK.

The stories are many—music is still being recomposed left and right, and this is the challenge we've passed on to the participants in the European Jazz Workshop. Guard your valuables(!), because students from Parma, Vienna, Nuremberg, and Oslo are here to steal.

The concert is a collaboration between the Oslo Jazz Festival and the Norwegian Academy of Music.