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.