Five months of JAZZ

It was “no easy chal­lenge”, in the words of Barcelona’s In­ter­na­tional Jazz Fes­ti­val di­rec­tor, Tito Ra­moneda, to de­sign an edi­tion to fol­low last year’s 50th an­niver­sary of the event. Yet The Pro­ject, which has or­gan­ised the fes­ti­val since 1989, has man­aged to come up with a line-up that ri­vals last year’s land­mark event and in­cludes both leg­ends and emerg­ing tal­ent on the in­ter­na­tional jazz scene.

From Brazil, for ex­am­ple, there will be con­certs by the likes of Maria Gadú, Adri­ana Cal­can­hotto and Dja­van (re­turn­ing to Barcelona 31 years since his last and only ap­pear­ance at the fes­ti­val).

Mean­while, from Cuba, which has al­ways had a pres­ence at the jazz fes­ti­val, we will see the likes of Cima­funk, one of the best Latin artists in 2019 ac­cord­ing to Bill­board mag­a­zine. Cima­funk can boast such il­lus­tri­ous fans as US actor Susan Saran­don, who said she would be fol­low­ing the new king of groove’s pas­sage through Eu­rope. Also due to per­form will be the AfroCuban All Stars of Juan de Mar­cos, of Buena Vista So­cial Club fame. How­ever, this year the fes­ti­val will have to do with­out the god­fa­ther of Cuban Latin jazz, Chu­cho Valdés.

As for other parts of the planet, the fes­ti­val will also wel­come top African artists, such as Angélique Kidjo, pre­sent­ing her trib­ute album to the late Celia Cruz, as well as the myth­i­cal Manu Dibango, who fa­mously sued Michael Jack­son for pla­gia­ris­ing his Soul Makossa.

New Or­leans, the birth­place of jazz, is nat­u­rally also rep­re­sented, with the em­blem­atic Dirty Dozen Brass Band, the im­petu­ous trum­pet of Chris­t­ian Scott, the wide-rang­ing Jon Cleary (per­form­ing with John Scofield) and, above all, Wyn­ton Marsalis, with his Jazz at Lin­coln Cen­ter Or­ches­tra, who will play on Feb­ru­ary 28 and is the rea­son why this year’s fes­ti­val will go on for five months.

Cat­alo­nia’s jazz tal­ent is also well-rep­re­sented at the fes­ti­val, with An­drea Motis kick­ing off a se­ries of per­for­mances on Oc­to­ber 19 in Sant Cugat, with the singer and trum­peter from Sant An­dreu set to per­form four more times at the fes­ti­val be­fore No­vem­ber 20, ac­count­ing for a total of 3,900 tick­ets, many of which sold out straight away. Mean­while, in Feb­ru­ary, Josep Mas “Kit­flus”, Rafael Escoté, Santi Arisa and Max Sun­yer will bid farewell to the stage after 40 years with the band Pe­ga­sus.

An­other an­niver­sary to be cel­e­brated in the fes­ti­val is 50 years since the leg­endary con­cert that Duke Elling­ton gave along­side the Coral Sant Jordi choir, which the fes­ti­val’s artis­tic di­rec­tor, Joan Anton Cararach, de­scribed as “one of the great mo­ments in the his­tory of jazz in Cat­alo­nia”. Half a cen­tury on, that key event will be reprised with the Coral Sant Jordi, now con­ducted by Oriol Mar­torell, this time per­form­ing with La Lo­co­mo­tora Negra.

How­ever, there are two big names that re­ally stand out in this year’s fes­ti­val line-up: Her­bie Han­cock, who fi­nally makes his re­turn to the fes­ti­val after the or­gan­is­ers have tried for years to tempt him over, and Ron Carter, key­board player and dou­ble bassist, re­spec­tively, in Miles Davis’ his­toric sec­ond quin­tet and the only mem­bers still ac­tive since Wayne Shorter’s re­tire­ment. Both the 79-year-old Han­cock and the 82-year-old Carter will be awarded with the gold medal awarded each year by the fes­ti­val. How­ever, these will not be the only jazzmen from the sta­ble of Miles Davis at the fes­ti­val’s 51st edi­tion, as Dave Hol­land – the man who went on to sub­sti­tute Carter on trum­pet – will per­form in a trio with Zakir Hus­sain and Chris Pot­ter.

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