For its twentieth anniversary, the Jazzycolors festival (November 3-December 3) will offer musicians from several European cities rarely associated with this musical style, such as Pristina, Sofia or Bratislava, the opportunity to perform in Paris.
The idea for this event founded in 2003, organized by the Ficep (Foreign Cultural Institutes of Paris Forum), germinated in the brain of Michael Pospisil, then director of the Czech Cultural Center: present in Paris, in the auditoriums with most of these cultural institutions, groups and musicians from various European countries.
The poster for this edition features the Kosovar duo made up of pianist Arben Ramadani and guitarist Armend Xhaferi (November 7 at the Italian Cultural Institute), which mixes jazz with traditional Albanian melodies, and Cíntia, a jazz-rock trio -electro of very young Portuguese musicians.
“We offer each of our members the opportunity to select a group that will best represent the jazz scene in their country, in total freedom”, declares to AFP the Polish Anna Zasada, coordinator of the various festivals organized each year by Ficep.
Also announced are musicians such as the German trombonist Nils Wogram – who we have seen in France alongside Michel Portal and Bojan Z in recent years – and emerging talents such as the Italian double bass player Fernandino Romano and his group of Totem acoustic contemporary jazz.
Each institute or cultural center having total freedom of choice, the styles are also very contrasting, ranging from the folk-jazz of the singer-guitarist Ginna Marker to the haunting melodies of the duo of Czech cellists-singers Tara Fuki.
Jazzycolors has also opened its doors since its creation to other non-European countries: Taiwan and South Korea this year.
Quite a symbol: Bojan Z, a Serbian pianist who arrived in France in 1988 at the age of twenty, then unknown and has now become the musical director of the jazz musician Michel Portal, who considers himself “European”, has sponsored this event since 2008. He opened the festival on Thursday evening at the Liszt Institute.
Jazzycolors 2022, until December 3, 2022
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