Hà Nội is about to get a busy autumn. The Việt Nam National Academy of Music (VNAM) is marking its 70th anniversary with a jazz programme running across October and November, pulling in nearly 100 artists from Việt Nam, the US, Sweden, Norway and the UK. It is the first time an event of this scale has gathered international and Vietnamese jazz musicians on the same platform in the capital.
The programme is organised by VNAM's Jazz Department — the academy's youngest faculty, though its director Nguyễn Huy Phương notes it has grown quickly in recent years. Two concerts anchor the line-up. A student showcase on October 9 looks at jazz through the lens of Vietnamese culture, while the headline Jazz and Friends X concert on November 6 is the one to catch: a deliberately experimental evening blending jazz with orchestral writing, traditional Vietnamese instruments and live technology.
That fusion is the real story. Jazz musicians and a string orchestra will improvise together on stage, creating what the department's head, Dr Nguyễn Tiến Mạnh, describes as a dialogue between three musical traditions rather than a one-way borrowing from Western jazz. The Academy sees it as part of a deliberate push to build a distinct Vietnamese jazz language — not just covering standards but composing and improvising in a voice rooted locally. A new book, Vietnamese Jazz Authors and Works 2026, will be launched alongside the concerts, documenting the genre's homegrown development.
Rounding it out is an international seminar on jazz and music technology, where visiting experts will join Vietnamese musicians and lecturers to discuss how tech is changing composition, live electronics, production and teaching.
For travellers, this is a good excuse to see a different side of Hà Nội. The city has a live music scene that most visitors never get past, tucked into the lanes of the Old Quarter and around the French Quarter, and this anniversary season gives you two big-date opportunities: October 9 for the student concert and November 6 for the main event, both at the Academy on Ngọc Khánh street near Công Viên Thống Nhất. Between shows, you can catch smaller sets in local jazz bars, where the same cross-over spirit — Vietnamese melodies meeting American swing — plays out on a much smaller scale.
If your trip doesn't line up with the concerts, the Academy occasionally opens rehearsals and student performances to the public, and the city's classical and traditional music venues are worth a look in their own right. And since the programme spans several weeks, pairing one evening of jazz with street food crawls in the Old Quarter, a day trip to Ninh Bình, or the coffee shops of Trịnh Công Sơn-era ballad lore makes an easy, culturally rich short break.
