84 CONCERTS TO BE HELD AT 14 VENUES ACROSS THE CITY DURING THE SAN SEBASTIAN JAZZ FESTIVAL, WHICH WILL RUN FROM JULY 20 TO 25
This year’s San Sebastian Jazz Festival will feature a broad range of top-class artists and we are now in the final stages of preparations for another bumper Festival across the city.
Events will be held at 14 different venues: Trinitate Plaza, Keler Gunea (Zurriola beach), Kursaal Auditorioa, FCC Victoria Eugenia Antzokia, Škoda San Telmo Museoa, Frigo Gunea, Fnac Gunea, Chillida Leku, Kutxa Kultur Tabakalera, Sala Club, Nauticool, Forum Fnac and two stages at Garbera. 84 concerts will be held at these venues, 54 of them free of charge, 21 by local groups and ten for families, as part of the tenth edition of Txikijazz. 8 of them will be part of the eighth edition of JazzEñe – the Spanish Jazz section that will once again be part of the San Sebastian Jazz Festival -, 4 from the Katapulta circuit…
The programmed events already announced include performances by established stars like Herbie Hancock, Iggy Pop, Diana Krall, Simple Minds, Gregory Porter, León Benavente, Hiromi, Steve Coleman, Amina Claudine Myers, Mulatu Astatke, Benny Green, Bruce Barth. Rising artists, who will no doubt define the course of Jazz in the next few years, are also included: Ben Lamar Gay, Louis Cole, Miho Hazama, Curtis Harding, Craig Taborn, Sofiane Pamart, Marco Mezquida, Christone “Kingfish” Ingram, Lakecia Benjamin, Lucia Fumero, Carlos Sarduy, Chico Pérez, Atrisma, Oreka TX and many more.
On top of all this, the concerts being announced today, mainly by local groups, who will perform at the stages of the Kursaal terraces (Frigo Gunea and Fnac Gunea), Forum FNAC, Garbera, Nauticool and TxikiJazz.
Awards:
The San Sebastian Jazz Festival Award will be given this year to two artists in recognition of their achievements throughout their long careers in the world of Jazz, Amina Claudine Myers and Mulatu Astatke.
Amina Claudine Myers is a pianist, organ-player, singer, composer, actress and educator who has been in the business of the creation of music for decades. Member of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM), Amina has made 11 records on her own and collaborated with other artists. She has composed for theatre productions, directed choruses and orchestras, and been a teacher…Throughout her career, she has worked with artists like Archie Shepp, Charlie Haden’s Liberation Orchestra, James Blood Ulmer, Lester Bowie, Bob Stewart, Joey Baron, Gene Ammons, Sonny Stitt, Muhal Richard Abrams, Bill Laswell, Eddie Harris, Von Freeman, Anthony Braxton, Henry Threadgill, Frank Lowe, Rahsaan Roland Kirk…
Born in 1943 in Western Ethiopia, Mulatu Astatke initially trained at London’s Trinity College of Music and later in Boston, at the prestigious Berklee shool of music, where he was the first African student. Returning to Addis Ababa in 1969, with everything he had learned and heard, he set about combining Jazz, Latin and traditional Ethiopian music to create a new style: Ethio-Jazz.
In his long and productive career, Astatke has been a vibraphonist, percussionist, composer, arranger, teacher, director… Following its heyday during Ethiopia’s “golden 70s”, Astatke’s music regained popularity from 1998 with the first album in the Ethiopiques series; and later in 2005, thanks to the appearance of seven of his numbers on the soundtrack of the movie by Jim Jarmusch, Broken Flowers.
Txikijazz:
This will be the tenth edition of Txikijazz, a season of concerts and activities aimed at families. To celebrate this, Txikijazz is growing, in terms of outlook, concerts and stages. Txikijazz will programme 9 concerts at 4 different venues: Kutxa Kultur Tabakalera, Chillida Leku, Centro Comercial Garbera and Fnac Gunea. In addition to the concerts at all these venues, there will be activities and workshops for boys and girls who attend.
The poster for this 10th edition of Txikijazz, which will run from July 21 to 25, was created by Ane Pikaza, who also created the poster for the 57th San Sebastian Jazz Festival.
NFT:
The 57th San Sebastian Jazz Festival will publish, from today at 11.30, a limited NFT edition (57 copies) of this year’s festival poster, designed by Ane Pikaza and entitled Jazzaldiaren Besarkada. The copies will be available, free of charge, via our website, where you can submit your request (one copy only per person until all 57 copies have gone). The website will also explain the NFT format, how it works, and how to submit a request.
This initiative represents our first step, in collaboration with Bakarts, with this technology, enabling us to offer a service to anyone wishing to acquire and collect this type of artistic creations, generated by Jazzaldia in digital format and delivered with authentication.
Streaming:
In order to allow all those Jazz lovers who can’t go to the concerts to fully enjoy them, The San Sebastian Jazz Festival will stream, free of charge, the concerts given by 14 artists. 5 of the concerts held at Trinitate Plaza and the 9 concerts taking place at FCC Victoria Eugenia Antzokia (including all those in the JazzEñe section). Access to the streaming feed will be available through our website and YouTube channel.
Jazzinema:
In addition, the sixth edition of Jazzinema, organised by The Basque Film Archive (Filmoteca Vasca) will run parallel to The San Sebastian Jazz Festival. This year Jazzinema will grow, both in the number of screenings and in the number of venues, thus facilitating access to enjoy the extraordinary relationship between cinema and Jazz.
Sponsors:
The San Sebastian Jazz Festival will continue to have the support of Frigo, Kutxabank, Škoda, FCC, Kutxa Fundazioa, El Diario Vasco, Fundación SGAE, Katapulta Tour...
And, as a novelty this year, the Zurriola Beach stage shall bear the name of our main sponsor, Keler, and will be called Keler Gunea.
One of the stages at the Kursaal will bear the name of Fnac, and Fnac will also host some of the concerts at its San Sebastian outlet, at the Fnac Forum.
Finally, Garbera, which will, for the first time this year, host some of the events programmed within the 57th San Sebastian Jazz Festival, will have two stages where 10 free concerts will take place.
International collaboration:
The San Sebastian Jazz Festival collaborates with international institutions, with a view to broadening and diversifying the musical activity programmed. This year, we shall collaborate with Fundación Japón and Kanasawa Jazz Street; with Lazio Sound; and with OARA and Le Rocher de Palmer.
