Azernews.Az

By Laman Ismayilova

The Third Baku Summer Jazz Days Festival continues to delight music lovers. The second day was remembered by the performance of the Israeli jazz virtuoso Adam Ben Ezra at the International Mugham Center.

At the opening of the evening, Avital Rosenberg, First Deputy Ambassador of Israel to Azerbaijan, noted that the musician’s performance in Baku is another bridge of culture between countries and peoples, Trend Life reported.

Musical unicum, virtuoso double bass player of modern times, Israeli jazz master Adam Ben Ezra does not like trivial and monotonous performances. His performance is always full of meaning and humor, sincere positive reaching the hearts of everyone.

For Adam there are no boundaries in music. It can be jazz and rock, classical and folk songs. He intentionally adds new colors to his palette, bringing elements of jazz, Latin and Mediterranean music into his play. His style, developed over the years, is unique and inimitable, and the variety of genres during concerts only gives extravagance, turning each of the performed compositions into a small masterpiece.

By his performance, Adam managed to show the possibilities of combining a fairly traditional, even classical instrument - a double bass - with modern technologies, in particular, with Loop Recorder, which makes the double bass sound like a piano, guitar, clarinet, melody, or beat.

It should be noted that at the evening he played both the clarinet and the piano, and even demonstrated his vocal abilities, constantly evoking the audience's applause. And, of course, the excellent performance of Adam Amitai (bass) and Gilad Dobrechka (percussion) is also noteworthy.

The host of the evening was the teacher at the Azerbaijan National Conservatory, jazz expert Tofig Hasansoy.

Baku Summer Jazz Days is a multi-faceted international project that was created on the initiative of the Premier Art Management Production Center with the support of the Culture Ministry.

Along with Azerbaijani jazzmen, talented musicians from Russia, Israel, France, Georgia and Switzerland are taking part in the festival.

Georgian IRIAO ethnic-jazz band will perform on June 14.The entire repertoire of IRIAO is based on Georgian folk decorated with jazz elements. IRIAO has performed at such major music festivals as the Java Jazz Festival in Indonesia, the Borneo Jazz Festival in Malaysia, the Alfa Jazz Festival in Ukraine, etc.

The evening will be continued by the young, incredibly talented French guitar virtuoso and composer Tom Ibarra with his quintet. Miles Davis, Pat Matini and Weather Report played a great role in the music life of the musician.

Ibarra released his debut album in 2015. At the age of 19, Tom performed on the same stage with such jazz musicians as Marcus Miller, Richard Bona, Didier Lockwood and many others. Tom Ibarra is the winner of the 2017 Letter One Rising Stars Jazz Award 2017.

Oleg Lundstrem Jazz Orchestra will give a concert on the Caspian coast on June 15. In 1994, the Guinness Book of Records recognized the Lundstrem band as the oldest continuously existing jazz band. This year the orchestra celebrates its 85th anniversary. The musicians gave more than 10,000 concerts. Oleg Lundstrem Jazz Orchestra is the only big band in the world that performed at the United Nations General Assembly Hall.

Joint performances by foreign guests with Azerbaijani jazzmen will undoubtedly be another surprise in the rich and colorful program of the festival.

This once again confirms the fact that music knows no barriers and boundaries, and musicians from different parts of the world understand each other without words, speaking the language of art.

Tickets can be purchased at all ticket offices of the city, ASAN Service centers, Ganjlik Mall, 28 Mall, and online on www.iticket.az.

Media partners of the event are Azernews.az, Trend.az, Day.az, Milli.az.

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Laman Ismayilova is AzerNews’ staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @Lam_Ismayilova

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