The 28th edition of the festival will once again bring the whole world to Cerkno. Musicians from fourteen countries including Slovenia will present a palette of modern jazz, in which the noble past flows with modern currents and innovation meets tradition. At this year’s first open-air jazz festival in Slovenia – which is famous for its relaxed atmosphere – the main program will feature ten concerts, while the accompanying program offers another eight events. The music reverberating from the festival stages will be, as befits a Cerkno festival, colorful and – with the use of less typical instruments for jazz and electronics – as innovative as possible.
The festival will kick off with the fiery Slovenian-Italian trio Disorder at the Border (Zlatko Kaučič, Giovanni Maier, Daniele D’Agaro), whose music is inspired by the free jazz of Ornette Coleman. The trumpeter Gabriele Mitelli, a prominent member of the younger generation of Italian experimental musicians, will perform for the first time with the trio. Experimentation takes center stage with the next performers, the Japanese-American tandem Otomo Yoshihide / Chris Pitsiokos, comprised of a veteran of Japanese jazz and improvisation and an up-and-coming American jazz player. The evening of the first day will conclude with the band The Attic, led by renowned Portuguese saxophonist Rodrigo Amado, who continues the tradition of spiritual jazz in the style of Pharoah Sanders.
Friday’s program will commence with the international ten-member experimental collective Šalter Ensemble. The group of ten musicians come from Slovenia, Switzerland and Austria, where they are considered to be the standard-bearers of jazz, sound art, new music, experiment and improvisation. This will be followed by a concert by Jure Pukl with the ANOROK quartet and a presentation of the new album Melt, which will be released in June. Trumpeter Ralph Alessi, an ECM recording artist, also plays in the quartet. The evening will be wrapped up by the legendary pianist Aki Takase, who this time returns to Cerkno with the international quintet JAPANIC. She invited collaboration from a younger generation of jazz musicians, with whom she has very successfully tried her hand at combining jazz, avant-garde and experimental electronic music, as well as hip-hop.
Saturday’s program will start in the music school with a performance by violinist Ana Kravanja and pianist Elisabeth Harnik, who will present this year’s album Vrtinci minljivosti / Vortices of Impermanence. The evening program on the main stage will be introduced by the American-French Tiger Trio, comprised of renowned jazz musicians Myra Melford, Nicole Mitchell and Joëlle Léandre, who skillfully combine chamber structure of compositions and improvisation. The Austrian-German tandem of keyboardist and drummer Elias Stemeseder / Christian Lillinger will boldly combine baroque and avant-garde in the PENUMBRA project. In the energetic finale of the festival, we look forward to the bustle of Balkan music, free improvisation and experimental interventions, provided by the Turkish-Greek trio Konstrukt with special guest, saxophonist Rodrigo Amado.
A further eight events have been prepared as part of the accompanying program. The opening event will be the sononyms sound installation prepared by Andrej Kobal. The installation in the Cerkno Museum consists of two parts, a permanent sound installation and a sound performance. Guests of the Jazz Incubator #1 residency will be members of the Bop en Bras quartet led by drummer Urban Kušar. Drummer Gal Furlan will perform a solo concert for Jazzohod participants. At the poetic-musical performance Črna skrinjica we will listen to verses by poets Urša Majcen, Pino Pograjc and Lenart Sušnik, accompanied by Jaka Berger’s music. There will be a roundtable on Music and new media technologies and a presentation of the book DIY House Shows and Music Venues in the US. At the end of the opening day, there will be a Jam session Pr’ Gabrijelu, and The Rhythm of Africa will be brought to us by young musicians at the final concert of the workshop under the mentorship of Boštjan Gombač and Nino Mureškič.
You are cordially invited to the 28th edition of the Jazz Cerkno Festival, which will take place between 18 and 20 May at Star plac and other locations. As always, Hotel Cerkno offers favourable accomodation for festival visitors and pre-sale festival tickets are available (until May 17) at mojekarte.si.
28. Jazz Cerkno – a festival with a palette of modern jazz: where the past inspires the present and innovation meets tradition.
More info: https://www.jazzcerkno.si/programme/jazz-cerkno/?lang=en
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