This year’s International Jazz Festival in Bansko offers a host of surprises, with a lineup of foremost musicians and singers from the East as well as from the West, says Dr. Emil Iliev, organizer of the world acclaimed music forum in Bansko, which opens on August 5.
Dr. Iliev adds that few people know, as yet, that the Georgia Big Band is going to take part in the festival – with its 28 members, the most famous pop and jazz performers in Georgia.
“The Georgia Big Band is the top music formation in Georgia in any genre,” says Dr. Emil Iliev. “It is going to be a magnificent concert. They are a very musical nation, very temperamental.”
The first day of the festival features the Sentimental Swingers, as well as Big Band Blagoevgrad, which the organizers want to establish as the big band throughout the entire event, playing on each of the festival days together with different guest performers from all over the world.
World famous guitarist Vlatko Stefanovski is also taking part in the festival with his trio.
“He plays and sings amazing Macedonian music – jazz renditions that are wonderfully arranged –not for nothing is he acclaimed as one of the world’s top 10 guitarists,” Dr. Iliev says and adds one more name to the list of participants that needs no introduction – Axel Zwingenberger, the world’s top blues and boogie-woogie pianist. As Iliev puts it boogie-woogie “is the most optimistic music we have.”
The first night of the International Jazz Festival in Bansko will wind up with Italian singer Patrizia Laquidara who has taken part in the Sanremo Music Festival for the past two years and has received the audience award.
Other stars featured in this year’s edition of the festival are the Radio Belgrade Big Band and the Swing Kids Big Band from Germany.
“This formation is made up of young musicians from Germany who have been performing for many years and even though the members change in time, they have retained their class and their conductor. And they have been getting better and better,” Dr. Emil Iliev says and adds that he is expecting many tourists from abroad to come to this year’s edition of the festival once again – from Great Britain, Germany, the Netherlands:
“There is no entrance fee to any of the concerts, the only thing is that you can’t stretch the town square – it can only hold 6-7,000, not 20,000. But interest is huge. I just don’t know where we are going to fit in all the people who want to come to the festival,” Dr. Emil Iliev says.
English version: Milena Daynova
On November 9, one of the halls of Trakia Ensemble in Plovdiv will host the traditional masterclass "With Kichka Savova’s Songs" . The event is organized by the Kichka Savova Foundation, chaired by Stefka Zdravkova, daughter of the renowned Thracian..
For thirty years now, Bulgarian violinist Iskrena Yordanova has been living in Lisbon. Everything she does as a musician is related to Baroque music. She has devoted much of her time to discovering ancient manuscripts, which she brings back to life with..
Kottarashky is one of the most intriguing musicians to have appeared on the Bulgarian music scene in the first decade of the 21 st century. The man behind the stage name is Nikola Gruev, and his work is an ongoing genre-blending experiment. He is..
An all-star Bulgarian band and a Bulgarian star performer have come together to revive a song written nearly a quarter century ago. The D2 band and..
The women's folk choir Dragostin Folk National is celebrating three decades of its existence with a spectacular concert. The concert will take place on..
Partly Cloudy