Five concerts that explore and discover sounds and spaces are part of the CriaJazz program — Novo Jazz Festival, which takes place between June and August in Leiria and Batalha, the organization announced Thursday.
The festival, which for four editions has sought to launch new talents and projects in non-conventional spaces, this year brings together musicians from Ukraine, Gambia and Spain, as well as a national band that crosses dixie with mime and a show of premiere of two Portuguese. musicians
“Jazz receives influences from all over the world. All existing sonorities converge. And that is the good thing about jazz and so captivating”, revealing today “a much broader concept than when it was born”, highlighted Lusa Vitória Condeço, from the theater group “O Nariz”, which organizes the festival, the objective of the programmatic changes by CriaJazz.
The event opens this year to other sounds, exercises and origins, abdicating to programming musicians who were born, lived or studied in Leiria, a premise of previous years.
Regarding this phase of CriaJazz, Vitória Condeço gives the example of Ebrima Mbye Solo, who plays the kora, a traditional African string instrument, and who will close the program.
“Ebrima uses her creativity, reinvents traditional themes and gives them her own stamp. It is this discovery and this journey that we want to do, ”she stressed.
This year there are two other novelties: for the first time the concerts extend outside the municipality of Leiria, with a double presentation of Mimo’s Dixie Band in Batalha; and two concerts will take place in Jardim Visconde da Barreira, a wooded space full of history, discreetly located in one of the parishes of Leiria.
“This year, because we have a fabulous garden that many people who live in Leiria are unaware of, we made this proposal to the council [de freguesia], what do I accept”. The Pedro Molina Quarteto and the duo Gastão Silva and Hugo Ferreira will perform there. “It is a way of energizing the garden, of making it known. It is a fantastic space”, described Vitória Condeço.
The festival begins on June 18 with the ÀVDYSH Band at Castelo de Leiria, a project by the Ukrainian singer-songwriter Katerina Avdysh, “a refugee in Portugal for a year”.
On July 2, the clarinetist Gastão Silva and the guitarist Hugo Ferreira premiere the “Yin e Yang” project in one of the “fantastic corners” of the Jardim do Visconde da Barreira, in Leiria.
CriaJazz will go to Batalha on July 16, for a double performance by the Mimo’s Dixie Band, scattered around the city’s historic center, “next to the Monastery”, and in the Pia do Urso sensory eco-park, in the parish of São Mamede.
In Jardim Visconde da Barreira there is a new concert, scheduled for July 30, with the quartet led by the Spanish Pedro Molina.
The last show is with the korista Ebrima Mbye Solo, on August 13, at Castelo de Leiria.
Source: Observadora
