Rare are those people to whom we journalists can bow. One of them is Oliver Belopeta who managed to organize the 40th edition of the Skopje Jazz Festival this year.

- Probably when I think of those 40 years, the culprit is the fast summer weather.

You have a catalog of festival posters and an exhibition, and the head of the Ljubljana Jazz Festival says that the Skopje Jazz Festival is the best in the region.

- I am very pleased with the 40th edition because it came through many hardships. Such a festival can not function without a certain amount of enthusiasm, and this year it was intensified with a fairly large dose of defiance. We did the program in May, when we had zero covid, and some predicted that there would be a new wave. We planned as if there would be no coffin and we were one of the few who planned as if there would be an opening, as it happened.

- I avoid saying that the festival is extremely highly ranked in Europe. We try with the team to maintain the high ranking of both the program and the poster designs, which I see as a special program. The design stays in the memory longer than the program itself, writes the director of the Ljubljana Jazz Festival in the catalog. But it is known in the world that it is one of the three best designs. "Our posters have won many awards at marketing festivals," said Oliver Belopeta.

This is the fourth generation of audiences, young, urban audiences, people who know languages. Does that change affect the program?

- The program festival has taken a step forward to follow the world trends of avant-garde jazz, experimental music. But it is interesting that in these ten years the audience has become even more consistent, with a young music that fills a good part of the audience. Germany and Belgium, for example, have a problem having an almost exclusively old audience. We strive to attract a young audience. If we have a good program, we also have a good audience. This year I was surprised that in this gray of ours, full of moody people, there was good company during the breaks both when entering and leaving. Those were cheerful people, says Belopeta.

Off Fest follows in November. A week of jazz again. Why does everything happen in winter?

- We do not have appropriate summer scenes. Off Fest has a deadline in June, but this year we had to postpone it due to the force of circumstances, adds Belopeta for the Morning Briefing.

Watch the whole conversation in the video