Following the huge success of last year’s edition of the Belgrade Jazz Festival, which was unanimously declared as being the best since the event was resurrected in 2005 – by the audience, but also by domestic and international critics – this year the organisers decided to offer an even bolder programme that will represent new artistic tendencies in contemporary jazz music.
This year’s edition of the Belgrade Jazz Festival will represent yet another step towards presenting today’s most important international jazz artists. The wish of the organisers is to share with their ever-expanding audience, as well as the international cultural public, a moment in the history of jazz when a new fusion of this direction is being born with other musical forms. Jazz is today, once again, the most exciting and creative form of popular music – and that’s why it’s time for visions of jazz and jazz visions. The Belgrade Jazz Festival will again run for five days this year, with its traditional double concert programme every night, in the halls of the Belgrade Youth Centre and the Sava Centre. The festival will include the performances of over 20 compositions from within the country and around the world.
The key names of this year’s programme include great American artists like outstanding saxophonist and composer Joshua Redman, a creator who paved the way for the younger generation in the 1990s and 2000s, Donny McCaslin, who worked in the compositions of David Bowie (on his final Blackstar album), then supergroup The Young Philadelphians, the main stars of which include such avant-garde stars as Marc Ribot and Jamaaladeen Tacuma. They are joined by numerous European artists who are presenting themselves to the Belgrade public for the first time, and who rely completely on the new eclectic aesthetics: from the top ambiental studio of Mats Eilertsen and the Rubicon project from Norway, to irresistible poetic pianist Jan Lundgren from Sweden; from enormously talented newcomers like Emile Parisien from France and Giovanni Guidi from Italy, to the dramatic contemporary treatment of the piano by Nitai Hershkovits from Israel, a former associate of Avishai Cohen; from the delicate but powerful Spaniards Josemi Carmona and Javier Colina, to the nocturnal melancholy of the Netherlands’ Wolfert Brederode.
Programme for the 33rd Belgrade Jazz Festival:
Thursday 26 October
Belgrade Youth Centre, Big Hall @19.30
EYOT (Serbia)
Jan Lundgren with Mattias Svensson & String Quartet – A tribute to Jan Johansson (Sweden)
Belgrade Youth Centre, Amerikana @23.00
Jakob Bro Trio (Denmark)
Marius Neset Quartet (Norway)
Friday 27 October
Belgrade Youth Centre, Big Hall @19.30
Wolfert Brederode Trio (Holland)
Nitai Hershkovits (Izrael)
Belgrade Youth Centre, Amerikana @23.00
Marc Ribot & Young Philadelphians + Strings (USA)
Kris Davis and Billy Drummond (Canada)
Saturday 28 October
Belgrade Youth Centre, Big Hall @19.30
Eva Klesse Quartett (Germany)
Giovanni Guidi “Inferno” (Italy)
Belgrade Youth Centre, Amerikana @23.00
Emile Parisien Quartet (France)
Ilhan Ersahin’s Istanbul Sessions (Turkey)
Sunday 29 October
Sava Center @19.30
Mats Eilertsen “Rubicon” (Norway)
Joshua Redman Trio (USA)
Belgrade Youth Centre, Amerikana @23.00
Rodrigo Amado Motion Trio (Portugal)
Peter Evans Ensemble (USA)
Monday 30 October
Sava Center @19.30
Donny McCaslin Group (USA)
Matija Dedic: “Three sides of jazz” feat. Gene Jackson & Joris Teepe (Croatia/USA/Holland)
Special guest Vasil Hadžimanov (Serbia)
Belgrade Youth Centre, Amerikana @23.00
Serbian showcase:
Sanja Markovic “Ascension”
Space Tigers (Serbia/Croatia/USA)
TAPAN
For more information, please visit http://www.bjf.rs/