Al Jarreau is the main act of the Bratislava Jazz Days. (source: Reuters)
WORLD star Al Jarreau, the three best bass guitarists in the world, and the British jazz-pop Swing Out Sister are the headliners of the Bratislava Jazz Days, which will start on October 24. The three-day festival, one of the main events of the concert season, will offer a generous portion of various forms of jazz at its traditional venue - the Culture and Leisure Park (PKO) on the Danube embankment.
Contrary to the expectations of Peter Lipa, jazz musician and the festival's art director, the sale of tickets to date indicates that the biggest interest is not in the Sunday star of the festival, 68-year old Al Jarreau, who will perform in Slovakia for the first time in his career, but in the project of the three bassists – Stanley Clarke, Marcus Miller and Victor Wooten, the SITA newswire wrote.
Their latest project, S.M.V., started spontaneously. In October 2007, when Clarke was accepting an award for his life-long work from the magazine Bass Player in New York, Miller and Wooten joined him on the stage for a jam session. By January, the three-generation group had closed itself in a studio and produced an album, Thunder. The Slovak audience can enjoy it live during the first day of the festival.
The headliner of the Saturday programme, Swing Out Sister, will arrive in a smaller group of three musicians and a singer, which Lipa believes will create a better condition for live music.
But people do not attend the festival only to hear the headliners, and it often happens that some of the less well-known bands overshadow the established stars.
On Friday, the festival will offer the acoustic trio The Band Plus from the U.S. with the critically acclaimed singer Wendy Lewis, and the Hungarian 15-member group The Free Style Chamber Orchestra (FSCO).
On Saturday evening, Lipa expects an interesting performance from Karrin Allyson, a vocalist and pianist from the U.S. Earlier that day, the Italian Gianfranco Continenza Band will introduce contemporary forms of fusion.
On Sunday, Karen Briggs, a violinist from New York, will perform with the international group Ján Fabrický Over Act. The Sunday programme will offer German jazz from the band called [re:jazz], famous for its jazz interpretation of electronic music hits, although it also performs its own songs.
Slovak jazz projects will open each festival evening. On Friday there will be Bukake, featuring Juraj Tatár, Martin Gašpar and Marcel Buntaj. One of the best Slovak jazz instrumentalists, saxophone player Radovan Tariška, will open Saturday evening with American trumpeter Ryan Carniaux. Keyboardist, composer and conductor Peter Breiner will launch the final evening of the festival with his Triango project.
Jazz Days will take place in Košice, Žilina and Komárno as well as Bratislava. Karen Briggs will headline the concerts in Žilina and Komárno while Al Jarreau will sing in Košice.
