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The seventeen international Kaunas Jazz festival was held in spring 2007 (last April weekend). Today it is one of the most impressive events of its kind in the Eastern Europe.
Every year Kaunas Jazz created and carefully fostered new traditions, many of which are unique.
Kaunas Jazz keeps up with the international jazz scene and presents Lithuanian audience with a wide range of the dominant contemporary jazz styles. The festival has often featured projects that combined jazz and classical music, the sounds of different indigenous peoples throughout the world, and the latest popular music trends. This suggests that Kaunas Jazz producers are concerned not only with the present, but with the future too.
The producers’ ambition to invite the general public as well as jazz lovers is obvious. Brass orchestra parades, the ceremony of hoisting the Kaunas Jazz flag, photo exhibitions, fashion shows, pavement drawings for children, air balloon flights, and festive fire works attract people who have little to do with jazz. This testifies to a long term strategy. Kaunas Jazz becomes a city festival, but more than this, it creates a jazz friendly atmosphere, thus developing its future audience.
Every year Kaunas Jazz presents a broad and mature range of contemporary jazz music. Musicians from almost 30 countries have performed within the framework of the festival. Kaunas Jazz does not leave Lithuanian musicians behind. To them it is a remarkable opportunity to improve and promote Lithuanian jazz.
Every year Kaunas Jazz created and carefully fostered new traditions, many of which are unique. They are carillon jazz projects held at the Courtyard of the War Museum, sacred jazz music concerts in churches, the Jewish Theme in Jazz at the city synagogue, and numerous shows on open air stages, clubs and art galleries.
Spectacular (often monumental) opening projects are constantly performed on the main stage of the festival. Kaunas Jazz spreads out beyond Kaunas. Its concerts are held in the capital city Vilnius as well as in other cities and towns of Lithuania. Among numerous Kaunas Jazz traditions, the unique Audience Choice stands out. It gives people the opportunity to meet their favourite performer again. These concerts take place in Vilnius and are the final chord of every Kaunas Jazz.
Kaunas Jazz is more than just a yearly event held in spring. It is the phenomenon that adds spice to Lithuanian jazz life. Recent years have seen regular concert cycles in Kaunas Jazz Autumn, Concerts of the Year before Christmas, Summer Jazz concerts in the Old Town Yard. The audience have already had the chance to enjoy the vocals of Take 6, The New York Voices, James Carter, Omar Sosa, Jason Moran. This year they will be introduced to the sound of Arturo Sandoval trumpet.
Every year producers of the festival commission a film on Kaunas Jazz, that is designed for and enjoyed by both Lithuanian and foreign viewers.
During the 17 years of its existence Kaunas Jazz has justified the confidence of the artists, the audience and sponsors, secured its status as an international festival and gained recognition. The democratic jazz festival open to a huge variety of styles has become a feast for the whole of Kaunas city as well as an international centre of attraction for jazz lovers and promoters.
It is only Kaunas Jazz that brings to Lithuania such internationally acclaimed musicians as Charles Lloyd, Elvin Jones, John Scofield, John Abercrombie, Jan Garbarek, Terje Rypdal, Palle Mikkelborg, Bela Fleck, Courtney Pine, Tania Maria, Mezzoforte, Shakatak, Yellowjackets, David Sanborn, Nils Peter Molvaer, Nils Pedersen, Bugge Wesseltoft, Django Bates, Eliane Elias, Terry Lyne Carrington, Barbara Dennerlein, Bobo Stenson, Trilok Gurtu, Richard Bona, Mike Stern, Kurt Elling, Hiram Bullock, Chico Freeman, Roy Hargrove, Regina Carter, Randy Brecker, Greg Osby, The Earth Wind & Fire Experience feat. Al McKay All Stars, Joshua Redman, Marilyn Mazur, Dianne Reeves, Dave Weckl, Arturo Sandoval, Richard Galliano, Manu Dibango, Maceo Parker, David Sanchez, Hernan Romero, Nosso Trio, Eddie Palmieri, Incognito, Al Di Meola among others.
Having matured remarkably, Kaunas Jazz remains one of the most important jazz promoting factors in Lithuania and an outstanding culture event of the country.
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