Jazzin' Around Europe

The days of the Ismet Siral Creative Music Studio in Istanbul have been so intense and full of meanings to be difficult to describe in an orderly way, so bear with me while I try to organize the information beginning with a bit of background about the Creative Music Studio and Ismet Siral.

BACKGROUND

The name ...

Index Introduction 1950s 1960s 1970s 1980s-1990s Polish Jazz Now Ten Essential Jazz Recordings from Poland

Introduction After 1945, like the rest of the Eastern and Central Europe, Poland fell under the dominance of Stalinist Russia--and the Soviets certainly did not ...

Fifteen years ago Jazz-Club Singen was established in relation to the modest little theatre cum cinema (called GEMS) at the edge of the little industrial town of Singen-am-Hohentwiel, in the handsome German hinterland of Lake Constance (the Bodensee). About halfway through this period I became a part-time resident of the region. I hopped on a train ...

Istanbul is already home to two major jazz festivals, but the scene registered a meaningful new addition lately. Emin Findikoglu, a pianist, composer and arranger who studied in USA during the '60s and was behind the very first jazz festival organized in the Bosphorous city, was contacted by the Municipality of Besiktas to organize a jazz ...

By Changamire

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3

Introduction I am Changamiré, a Jazz/R&B singer in Washington, DC, USA. This story is about my performance at the 8th Annual Georgian International Festival of the Arts (GIFT), the weekend of June 11, 2004, in the warm and charming city of Tbilisi, the capital ...

By Changamire

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3

Introduction I am Changamiré, a Jazz/R&B singer in Washington, DC, USA. This story is about my performance at the 8th Annual Georgian International Festival of the Arts (GIFT), the weekend of June 11, 2004, in the warm and charming city of Tbilisi, the capital ...

By Changamire

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3

Introduction I am Changamiré, a Jazz/R&B singer in Washington, DC, USA. This story is about my performance at the 8th Annual Georgian International Festival of the Arts (GIFT), the weekend of June 11, 2004, in the warm and charming city of Tbilisi, the capital ...

Vit Svec (right) eerily opens up his last set with bass chords that flutter like bat wings in a dark cave. To his right, the head of pianist Matej Banko begins to dip and bob and, just before his nose touches the piano keys, he begins to play quick, staccato notes that bounce around the tourists ...

The Jazz festival movement did not penetrate the Iron Curtain until the late 1950s, when some Communist regimes, trying to liberalize their public image, allowed many things that were not possible during Stalin's era: abstract art, modern dance, cinema with no propaganda message, and jazz music.

Jazz Jamboree , the first major jazz festival to establish ...

Perpignan is an ancient and noble town on the border between France and Spain. It was the capital of the Catalan kingdom, and it is still very proud of this heritage: in some ways, traveling by train for example, it's much closer to Barcelona than to Paris. This is one of the reasons why the Jazzebre ...

Are you still mad at yourself because you didn't pick up those Arista LPs in the cutout bins? Would you kick your own butt because you missed the concert when Anthony Braxton's quartet with Crispell, Dresser and Hemingway came in a venue near you? Don't despair, there is hope still. In the current time-cycle, rather 'complex' ...

Tampere is the biggest inland town of Scandinavia, but it’s sitting between two lakes on a narrow strip of land, so it has a somewhat marine air about it. Due to the abundance of water it was an important industrial center for papermills and textiles, but now most of these heavy industries have moved elsewhere: Finland’s ...

The Serchio valley extends north-east of the city of Lucca, in Tuscany, toward the Appennines and the city of Modena in the Northern region of Emily. Situated between two rich areas – the Lucca plain and Versilia with its fashionable beaches and the marble quarries area of Carrara – it’s rather poor and kind of a ...

How many jazz festivals take their name from a Greek vase? I bet not many, but this is the case for the Talos Jazz Festival, which takes place in the town of Ruvo, in Apulia. For the geographically challenged, this is the heel of the Italian boot, and a place with a cultural and musical history ...