53rd LJUBLJANA JAZZ FESTIVAL - CANKARJEV DOM

Published on 21 february 2023

53rd LJUBLJANA JAZZ FESTIVAL

Address by the Festival Director Bogdan Benigar

The endeavours of this year's jazz festival have been oriented towards continuing the programming scheme, devised on the festival's 50th anniversary, expressing the conviction that such a festival is in the interest of the public only if promoting the latest achievements in jazz and other novel, broader music tendencies. Thanks to favourable circumstances, the festival has been able to derive support and inspiration from Clean Feed, a Portuguese record company that in 2011 again carried the day in critics' polls in Portugal, USA, Italy and elsewhere, winning most accolades for its individual albums or being voted best label. And we are happy to announce the news that the new edition of the Ljubljana Jazz Festival will this year start with the first two albums, released last year (Angles Octet, Igor Lumpert), and that at least two of this festival's concerts are projects scheduled for 2013. Therefore, this is collaboration with a vision, which extends far beyond the festival curtain call. The vision also features various other stories. Some special and exclusive, some reflecting the integration of Slovenian masterly musicians into the tumultuous creativity of New York, and some returning to personalities familiar for several decades. I suggest we savour all of these ingredients together, to be able to truly feel the taste of the forthcoming 53rd Ljubljana Jazz Festival. I sincerely believe it already smells delectably.

Address by the Pedro Costa, Co-curator

For some strange reason there was a lack of innovative instrumentalists of trumpet in Jazz or what so called improvised music for some years. It´s hard to figure who were the newcomers on this tool in the eighties and nineties, open minded musicians pushing the envelope, except for just a few like Herb Robertson, Paul Smoker and a bit later, Dave Douglas.

This years program was conceived having this in mind, presenting some of the most exciting young lions of this brass instrument like Ibrahim Maalouf, Peter Evans, Nate Wooley, Susana Santos Silva, Jason Palmer, Jonathan Powell, but also a man that has been showing his talent on trumpet, also on saxophones for over 40 years, the ever amazing Joe McPhee.

We will have the chance to watch great music featuring these great people in a big variety of contexts, from solo to big bands. But this is only the spotlight of the festival, besides the trumpet this year´s program will include some of the most compelling players of today´s music in big palette of sounds and aesthetics.
Nowadays the only difficulty is to choose, or not, from the great batch of players that came on the international scene in the past ten years. To name just a few outside the above mentioned list, and not diggin' too deep we can find some other great ones as Taylor Ho Bynum, Ralph Alessi, Magnus Broo, Axel Dorner, Darren Johnston, Kirk Knuffke, Matthias Schriefl, Rob Mazurek, among many others.

Check it out for yourself - PROGRAMME of the Festival.