JazzFestBrno revealed the first four concerts from the programme for its 17th year. The Israeli bass player Avishai Cohen is returning to Brno with a new expanded group and an album “1970”. Then there will be the saxophonist Donny McCaslin, the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with their bandmaster Wynton Marsalis and the American pianist Brad Mehldau.
“The long-term mission of the festival is to present jazz in all its diverse forms and I think that seeing the first declassified names from the coming year once again confirms that jazz as a genre has now completely lost its clear contour,” states artistic director of the festival Vilém Spilka.
The first concert of JazzFestu Brno 2018 will take place on 1 February in Boby Centre. The famous American big band Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra will perform, led by the renowned trumpeter and composer Wynton Marsalis. “Fifteen of the best contemporary jazz soloists section players and arrangers play in the big band. The uniqueness of Wynton Marsalis himself is shown in the fact that at the age of twenty one, in 1982, he made his debut as leader and since that time has recorded more than 60 discs in the genres of jazz and classical music, winning a total of nine Grammy awards. In 1983 he became the first and only artist to win Grammy awards for both classical music and jazz in the same year and he repeated this unbelievable feat in,” adds Spilka.
The American pianist Brad Mehldau, who will be playing 18 February in Besední dům, is returning to Brno after four years. Brad Mehldau is in the top league of jazz and crossover musicians and his musical development has inspired countless successors around the world. He draws upon jazz, classical music and experimental music but also from pop.
A third artist, performing in Brno for the first time, is the American saxophonist and composer Donny McCaslin. He will be playing with his group on 15 March in Sono Centre. This native Californian has been nominated for Grammy awards three times during his musical career. His career too off when McCaslin and his group were invited to work with David Bowie, to record his album Blackstar, which turned out to be Bowie’s last masterpiece.
The programme will also include a concert by the Israeli bass player, composer and singer Avishai Cohen. He will be presenting his latest concert project and album 1970 on 5 April in Boby Centre. The number 1970 is the year of Cohen’s birth and so indicates the personal dimension of this album, in which Avishai pays tribute to his musical influences from African and Latin American music through Sephardic traditions to the sophisticated soul and pop of Stevie Wonder and other legends of Afro-American music.
No comment added yet..