On October 9, the tenth edition of the Plovdiv Jazz Nights festival opens at the Boris Christoff Center of Culture in Plovdiv. Like in previous years, this year too the playbill features a few interesting names and projects.  Milen Gledachev, organizer of the music event brings us more:

"We kick off the festival with the latest project of Milcho Leviev, Song of the Clown. It is based on music by Bulgarian composer Pancho Vladigerov. The album sounds eclectic as it merges classical music, jazz, poetry and theater. Various artists have taken part in it including the grandsons of Pancho Vladigerov, Alexander and Constantine who are famous jazzmen. The pieces in Song of the Clown represent a collaboration of jazz and theater music from Pancho Vladigerov's early creative period, the 1920s. Back at that time he was writing music for some Max Reinhardt shows in Berlin and Vienna."

"There is hardly a day that I do not mention Pancho Vladigerov in one way or another”, Milcho Leviev, a disciple of the great composer, admits. “His theater music reveals a rich and unexplored world that comes across with a sound both jazzy and modern, surprising and challenging. And having in mind the fact that this music was written a century ago, we easily get a notion of Pancho Vladigerov's amazing genius.”

On 10 October Plovdiv Jazz Nights continue with the music of Acoustic Version band. This year Antony Donchev (piano), Georgi Donchev (double bass) and Hristo Yotsov (percussions) celebrate the 30th anniversary of the jazz trio with concerts in a few Bulgarian towns. Plovdiv is one of their stopovers. The three musicians have international solo careers of their own. Today they continue playing and writing music and hand over their experience to their students.

A day later, on 11 October, Plovdiv audiences will be lucky to enjoy the music of Frank Gambale, jazz guitarists from the Chick Corea band. He will appear in Bulgaria for the first time with his own quartet. More about the concert from Milen Gledachev:

"Since last year we have been trying to contact Frank Gambale and invite him to our festival. Luckily, his Europe tour that has been on for a few months now includes countries close to Bulgaria. Apart from playing, he also creates lyrics and writes rock, R&B and Latino music. I imagine that he will present to us an amalgam of all these styles. Our team is convinced that this concert will be the highlight in the program of the Plovdiv Jazz Nights tenth edition.”

The Plovdiv Jazz Nights International Festival closes on 12 October with a concert of Theodosii Spassov who is going to present a new project. In it the shepherd's flute virtuoso teams up with Plovdiv-based musicians Miroslav Turiiski (piano), Nikoay Karageorgiev (guitar), Alexander Lekov (bass) and Natcho Gospodinov (percussions) to blend together traditional Balkan music with jazz, pop and world music.

More about the jazz festival on its website: http://www.plovdivjazz.com/index.php

English Daniela Konstantinova

Audio file contains the following pieces:

1. Milcho Leviev, Beep Bob

2. Acoustic Version, live recording

3. Frank Gambale, Rocks