YEAR 2008

«Good jazz is an explosive cocktail, made of incompatible elements. And «The Jazz Province - 2008» festival, that was held in Voronezh, is nothing but an additional proof to that point.»

(Voronezh city, city portal «The Best City», 05.11.2011)

Nowadays festival was devoted to the 100-year anniversary of Lionel Hampton. He was just the same titan of jazz, such as Armstrong and Goodman. The last one, actually, was the musician who «discovered» a vibraphone as an instrument of the flawless improvisation.

In the period of Cold War conflict Hampton managed to do an unbelievable thing. He convinced Congress to invite Soviet, and later Russian, jazzmen to his international festival in Moscow town, state of Idaho. In 1989 Leonid Vintskevich was there in a company of Lembit Saarsalu. And later, after some time, very young Nikolai Vintskevich made it there too… «We remember Hampton giving us his hand. – said Leonid Vintskevich. – It is so important to touch the thing that was your dream once. What else could be that beautiful in this life, if not this? Everyone today pay respect to this amazing, consummate vibraphone-player, composer, showman, virtuoso and a rare businessman».

In the memory of a great vibraphonist, Volker Frischling, a vibraphonist was invited to the festival. He comes from Germany and plays vibraphone for thirty years already. Frischling takes Hampton as his own inspirer. He also happened to share one stage with Hampton several times in past.

Another feature of the 13th «Jazz Province» festival was that it had gathered all the top jazz musicians who were getting «Grammy» rewards so fast and performed on prestigious stages such as «Carnegie-Hall», Vienna Opera and «Grand Opera».

The high spot of the program of the festival was the performance of the «New York Voices» band. They were the loureats of «Grammy» reward and one of the best jazz vocal bands in the world ever.

Guitarist Andrei Bondarchuk represented «Paris Virtuosos» quartet to the public. It consisted of guitarists and a drummer. There’re two Frenchmen in a group (guitarists Eric Sampe and Amori Fillard), a Russian, and also a black percussionist Felix Sabal-Lecco.

Another international collective consisted of guitarist and vocalist Sergio Bastos from Brazil, saxophonist and accordionist Raivo Tafenau from Estonia, electro-guitar player Ein Egan from Estonia, drummer Ollie Estola from Finland, and an acoustic-bass player Michel Moelhand from Estonia.

There was also a memorable performance of a jazz saxophonist and a People’s artist of Russia George Garanyan this year.

Besides, Leonid Vintskevich represented an international project «JP Project» (USA-Russia), where he played together with his son, saxophonist Nikolai Vintskevich, drummer Joel Taylor, bassist Kip Reed and trombonist and percussionist Jay Ashby.

SHARE WITH FRIENDS:

Visit another year: