Riyadh International Jazz Festival Joins Prestigious World Network

The Saudi Music Commission logo
The Saudi Music Commission logo
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Riyadh International Jazz Festival Joins Prestigious World Network

The Saudi Music Commission logo
The Saudi Music Commission logo

The Saudi Music Commission announced that the Riyadh International Jazz Festival joined the World Jazz Network, one of the leading international gatherings for jazz talent exchange, enhancing Saudi Arabia’s cultural presence at the global level.

With this step, the Riyadh International Jazz Festival becomes part of a network that brings together top jazz festivals and cultural institutions worldwide. The network connects music professionals and audiences, fostering an exchange of expertise and knowledge within the jazz community. It aims to enrich the global jazz scene, enhance community bonds, and build connections among audiences worldwide, contributing to creativity and the development of art.

Each year, network partners gather at the Amersfoort World Jazz Festival, a platform for sharing ideas and visions, creating meaningful opportunities for international collaboration in the jazz field.
The membership of the Riyadh International Jazz Festival in the network represents a strategic move that reflects Saudi Arabia's commitment to developing arts and culture, providing a rich musical experience for both the local community and festival visitors from around the world.
The festival, organized by the Music Commission, is a global musical event that attracts prominent jazz musicians and creators from around the world, while providing creative spaces for Saudi talent to showcase diverse musical styles. The festival also features various musical activities and art exhibitions, enhancing the visitor experience and reinforcing the Kingdom’s status as a global destination for culture, arts, and creativity.



Thousands Greet the Winter Solstice at the Ancient Stonehenge Monument

A person holds up a smart phone as they wait for sunrise during the winter Solstice celebrations at Stonehenge, England, Saturday, Dec. 21, 2024. (AP Photo/Anthony Upton)
A person holds up a smart phone as they wait for sunrise during the winter Solstice celebrations at Stonehenge, England, Saturday, Dec. 21, 2024. (AP Photo/Anthony Upton)
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Thousands Greet the Winter Solstice at the Ancient Stonehenge Monument

A person holds up a smart phone as they wait for sunrise during the winter Solstice celebrations at Stonehenge, England, Saturday, Dec. 21, 2024. (AP Photo/Anthony Upton)
A person holds up a smart phone as they wait for sunrise during the winter Solstice celebrations at Stonehenge, England, Saturday, Dec. 21, 2024. (AP Photo/Anthony Upton)

Thousands of tourists, pagans, druids and people simply yearning for the promise of spring marked the dawn of the shortest day of the year at the ancient Stonehenge monument on Saturday.

Revelers cheered and beat drums as the sun rose at 8:09 a.m. (0809 GMT) over the giant standing stones on the winter solstice — the shortest day and the longest night in the Northern Hemisphere. No one could see the sun through the low winter cloud, but that did not deter a flurry of drumming, chanting and singing as dawn broke.

There will be less than eight hours of daylight in England on Saturday — but after that, the days get longer until the summer solstice in June.

The solstices are the only occasions when visitors can go right up to the stones at Stonehenge, and thousands are willing to rise before dawn to soak up the atmosphere.

The stone circle, whose giant pillars each took 1,000 people to move, was erected starting about 5,000 years ago by a sun-worshiping Neolithic culture, according to The AP. Its full purpose is still debated: Was it a temple, a solar calculator, a cemetery, or some combination of all three?

In a paper published in the journal Archaeology International, researchers from University College London and Aberystwyth University said the site on Salisbury Plain, about 128 kilometers (80 miles) southwest of London, may have had political as well as spiritual significance.

That follows from the recent discovery that one of Stonehenge’s stones — the unique stone lying flat at the center of the monument, dubbed the “altar stone” — originated in Scotland, hundreds of miles north of the site. Some of the other stones were brought from the Preseli Hills in southwest Wales, nearly 240 kilometers (150 miles) to the west,

Lead author Mike Parker Pearson from UCL’s Institute of Archaeology said the geographical diversity suggests Stonehenge may have served as a “monument of unification for the peoples of Britain, celebrating their eternal links with their ancestors and the cosmos.”