Jazz Cerkno, in cooperation with PureZen Records, presents a new album in Live at Jazz Cerkno discography series. The first album from this series, The White Pebbles, was released in 2014 by the Milko Lazar quartet (or, rather, his alter-ego, Razal Oklim Quartet). Now the album Subconscious.Rituals has been released, a recording of the final concert of a musical workshop under the title Young Researchers I. held at this year's festival. This kind of creative program, which will now be a permanent part of the festival, is intended for already formed young musicians or students, and the festival concert is the first step in the longer-term activity of the band that was formed at our festival. This year, the program Young Researchers, designed and led by Dré Hočevar, was created by alto saxophonist Luka Zabric, baritone saxophonist Jasna Kolar, cellist Urban Megušar, trumpeter Jan Lovšin and the leader of the band, pianist Miha Gantar, who is also the author of the title composition on the single track album.
Miha Gantar (1997) is a pianist and composer studying jazz piano at the Institute of Jazz at the University of Music and Performing Arts in Graz. In addition to the Jazz Cerkno Festival, he has performed at the Jazz Festival Ljubljana, Sonica, Jazzinty and the Jazz Festival Copenhagen. Apart from the Subconscious.Rituals quintet, he also leads his trio and is a member of the Container Doxa audiovisual collective.
"The Young Researchers Program, through intergenerational integration, enables selected individuals to create an original musical work and present it as a part of the Jazz Cerkno festival program." This is how Dré Hočevar described the purpose of this program. After several days of preparation and exercises, the quintet played a concert at the Music School in Cerkno - the musicians played nearly one-hour long concert in one piece and carefully developed an inspired free exchange of ideas that are now published on the album.
"Despite its complex transitions, the composition is characterised by a certain shyness and refrains from drifting into summery excess. On the other hand, it is not concocted from a plethora of established expressions, approaches, and techniques typically at the core of improvisational music." (from the liner notes by Luka T. Zagoričnik)
In December 2018, the Subconscious.Rituals album was released as CD and in digital format at Bandcamp site; the latter will be a platform for the festival's concert recordings. At https://jazzcerkno.bandcamp.com you can listen to the album and buy it. In the future, the Jazz Cerkno Institution, in cooperation with the PureZen Records label, will continue to publish festival concerts, especially by young Slovenian musicians who will partake in the Young Researchers program. Occasionally, we will also surprise jazz fans with an album of well-known musicians, which will be released in cooperation with an established foreign record label.
