March in the Western Cape was a busy month for jazz. From city stages to vineyard gatherings, the music travelled far and wide — filling concert halls, spilling into open-air venues, reminding us of its power to connect, to move, to celebrate.
Now in April, the road turns inward — towards Prince Albert, deep in the Karoo. The ears of music lovers turn towards a different kind of listening, because while the world marks International Jazz Day on April 30, Journey to Jazz opens not with spectacle but with something rarer: space.
At the foot of the Swartberg Mountains, this small Karoo town hosts a festival that’s an invitation rather than an event. In the small town streets, jazz isn’t performed at you — it happens with you.
Audiences can walk between venues — a church, a stoep, a community courtyard, and sometimes even take a slow drive to a mountain pass. The distances are small, but the encounters are profound. The point is to meet people, linger with them until the moment comes to listen.
Journey to Jazz is presented by Prince Albert Community Trust (PACT) and co-produced each year by the town’s youth. To describe it as “a festival” misses the point entirely. Every ticket sold does something beyond securing your seat — it supports young musicians finding their voice.
It supports training, mentorship, social enterprise and initiatives like the newly formed Prince Albert Hospitality Academy. It helps to prop up a model of development that grows every year — through collaboration and trust. But attending Journey to Jazz isn’t about charity; it fosters the enjoyment of participation, which is what brings people back, year after year.
And that spirit extends beyond the performances themselves. Each year, the festival’s popular talks and masterclasses programme explores jazz as more than music; it looks at jazz as a shared language that can be explored, exchanged and carried forward across the globe.
At the PACT Centre, conversations will unfold between artists and audiences: from reflections on the Karoo Jazz Project’s evolution to explorations of South African vocal traditions to dialogues tracing the roots and future of jazz across the continent.
Among the most exciting and interesting of these will be Rob Allan aka DJ Bob’s masterclass, where the act of listening becomes an art form in itself. Jazz will be unpacked through vinyl, storytelling and curation — inviting participants to explore how music is selected, shaped and shared. Attendees will be encouraged to build their own listening journeys. The idea isn’t to offer instruction but to foster exchange, he says. “I hope it will be a space where knowledge moves in many directions and where listening spaces, gatherings and jazz clubs take shape in ways that reflect each group’s identity, rhythm and voice.”
Now in its fourth year, the festival continues to expand — embracing new venues and new ways to experience each beautiful space. One of these is the chance to sit in a mountain pass as the wind becomes part of the music, and as the festival’s creative director Brenda Sisane frames it, “to feel time stretch, and to understand something fundamental: jazz, at its core, has always been a conversation”.
Underpinning this, the 2026 programme brings together artists who understand music as both performance and dialogue. From Zoë Modiga, who will choreograph a performance specifically for the mountain, to Kyle Shepherd’s world premiere score for the films of William Kentridge, commissioned by PACT, the festival continues to lean into work that’s intentional, immersive and deeply felt.
Alongside them are voices like Vusi Mahlasela, Paul Hanmer, Nomfundo Xaluva, Linda Sikhakhane, Paras “Sibalukhulu” Dlamini, Yonela Mnana, Italian trio ¡Gracia! and a new generation emerging through the Karoo Jazz Project — a living continuum of sound and story.
Then there’s the town itself.
The Greet & Meet programme once again invites visitors beyond the venues — into conversations, walks, shared meals, storytelling and the everyday rhythm of Prince Albert.
People tell me they come here not just for the music, but for what the experience gives back — a sense of perspective, grounding and restoration. It’s where I’ll be and why I come back every year — disconnecting in order to reconnect, to breathe, to hear and hopefully to feel the music again.
Journey to Jazz takes place in Prince Albert from April 30 to May 3 2026. Tickets are available via Quicket.
