The 35th Vilnius Jazz Festival will be highlighted by jazz masters from Great Britain and Lithuania

On October 13, Vilnius Jazz Festival, Lithuania’s only contemporary jazz and improvisational music festival, returns to the capital. For four days, the UK’s most original improvisers will share their latest creative ideas with audiences at the Old Vilnius Theater (former Lithuanian-Russian Drama Theatre). JAV, France, Switzerland, Ukraine and Lithuania.

The festival will be opened by one of the most prominent voices in modern jazz – British pianist, organist, composer and bandleader Alexander Hawkins with his trio of double bassist Neil Charles and drummer Steven Davis.

Over the decade of its existence, this band has managed to make a lasting impact on modern jazz. In 2018, he began an active collaboration with American saxophonist Anthony Braxton, an icon of modern jazz, touring Europe with his quartet and recording these performances in a 13-album set. The A. Hawkins Trio also forms the core of the famous English saxophonist John Surman’s quartet.

Critics compare these musicians’ sensitivity to each other’s impulses to the fluidity of mercury. Her music skillfully combines rationality and spontaneity.

A. Hawkins expresses himself through an extremely diverse set of skills, combining a unique composition style with free improvisation and surprising the jazz world with his unique playing technique. He plays in groups ranging from duos to large groups, but also appears as a soloist and composes and arranges music for well-known groups.

Interestingly, the musician studied law and criminology at Cambridge, but through his creativity and fleeting imagination he was able to develop a stunning playing style and gain a reputation as one of Britain’s most innovative pianists and composers. He deliberately abandoned the academic study of jazz in order to play what he liked and how he wanted.

The musician has performed and collaborated in the recording studio with a constellation of contemporary improvisation leaders from across generations, including Evan Parker, Dada Leo Smith, Marshall Allen, Han Bennink, Hamid Drake, Rob Mazurek, Taylor Ho Bynum, Chabaca Hutchings, and Michael Furmanek. Nicole Mitchell, Mattana Roberts, Esperanza Spalding, Jonny Greenwood, Angelica Nesher. He is also known for performing in legendary South African drummers Louis Mohole Mohole.

In 2015, we heard A. Hawkins perform a program dedicated to American saxophone legend Steve Lacy on the “Vilnius Jazz” stage with Italian saxophonist Roberto Ottaviano, and in 2018 he presented a project inspired by a traditional Ethiopian song with Swedish singer Sofia Jernberg. Meet an interesting pianist trio waiting for you.

The second part of the evening is exciting – a promising concert of the project that brought together the brightest representatives of jazz and improvisational music from the temporary capital and the port city. Its participants – the musicians of the avant-garde trio “Ažuoliniai berželiai” and the Klaipeda Jazz Orchestra – share more than one interesting work.

Founded in the temporary capital and unparalleled in the country, the trio of multi-instrumentalists Arno Michalkinas, Thomas Rasmaus and Simon Kubinis is alien to the formulas of traditional musical creativity. These musicians have a long-standing partnership and know each other’s individual characteristics well. The group actively gives concerts in Lithuania and abroad. Oak Birches’ music has been included on five albums.

The Klaipeda Jazz Orchestra was assembled in 2013 from the best jazz musicians of the Western Region – professionals, students, current and former residents of Klaipeda – by its current conductor, saxophonist Kestutis Sova. The group became the true jazz ambassador of Western Lithuania.

He represents the coastal city in many international jazz festivals and projects and regularly organizes educational programs for young artists in Klaipeda. The orchestra played with many famous foreign musicians, including Jojo Mayer, Verne Spivak, David Katz, Spaniard Francisco Ángel Latino, Ukrainian Anastasia Bukina, Grammy Award nominee from the United States of America Nicole Zhoraitis and Italian guitarist Alessandro Florio.

The project will see that geographical boundaries no longer play a role in jazz in the country – musicians are not only taking up ideas developed in the capital, but interesting processes are also taking place outside the capital.

At the concert, jazz stars of Central and Western Lithuania will present the vinyl and CD arrangements “Ėuolinių berželių” from 2020 and the album “Bon Bon Paris” by the Klaipeda Jazz Orchestra.