Articles by Nenad Georgievski

Book Review

Go Where You Look: The Weather and Other Stories

by Nenad Georgievski
November 7, 2026

The Weather and Other Stories Laurie Anderson 320 Pages ISBN: 9780847840762 Rizzoli Electa 2026 To spend time with Laurie Anderson is to be gently nudged into questioning the very structure of the stories we live by. For over five decades, the 79-year-old artist, musician, and self-described storyteller has operated at the sharp intersection of technology, myth, and American political life. With The Weather and Other Stories--a handsome monograph published by Rizzoli Electa documenting ...

Live Review

Dan Pugach and the Macedonian National Jazz Orchestra at the NOB

by Nenad Georgievski
October 15, 2026

Dan Pugach and the Macedonian National Jazz Orchestra NOB Skopje, Macedonia October 7, 2026 Big-band jazz thrives on a productive contradiction. Its arrangements demand discipline, coordination, and a collective sense of direction, yet the music comes alive when individual musicians find room to assert their personalities within that carefully constructed framework. At the National Opera and Ballet in Skopje on October 7, Dan Pugach and the National Jazz Orchestra demonstrated just how much expressive freedom ...

Live Review

Punkt Festival 2026

by Nenad Georgievski
September 23, 2026

Punkt FestivalTeateret/KunstsiloKristiansand, Norway September 3-5, 2026 Kristiansand does not announce itself the way a festival city usually does. The southern Norwegian port sits low along a coastline of pale granite and pine, its old town a grid of white wooden houses running down to Fiskebrygga, a fishing-harbor district where cruise ships dock a short walk from the quay. Just across the water, the wooded hill of Odderøya--once a naval base, now laced with ...

Album Review

Milcho Leviev: Letter To America

Read "Letter To America" reviewed by Nenad Georgievski

by Nenad Georgievski
September 13, 2026

Milcho Leviev's Letter to America (reissued on vinyl from his final 2015 solo piano studio recording, on Perfect Records, originally titled Quiet March) distills a lifetime of defiance, cinematic grandeur, and cross-cultural mastery into its rawest, most intimate essence. Comprising a selection of movie soundtrack themes written over the span of 40 years, the album captures the legendary Bulgarian pianist (who passed away in 2019), revisiting the melodies that once rattled the communist regime and ultimately defined his path from Plovdiv ...

Interview

Petr Studený: Listening as a Creative Act

by Nenad Georgievski
August 22, 2026

For Petr Studený, music has never been a passive background hum. Since 1979, he has operated under the self-assigned title of “active listener"--a designation that treats the intake of sound as a foundational creative act. Based in Prague, a city whose “magical" atmosphere he credits as a silent collaborator, Studený has spent decades navigating the intersections of industrial noise, minimalism, and the historical avant-garde. He has emerged as a vital bridge between the radical traditions of the 20th century and the ...

Album Review

Peggy Lee, Julien Wilson, Theo Carbo, Dylan van der Schyff: Waiting Music

Read "Waiting Music" reviewed by Nenad Georgievski

by Nenad Georgievski
June 16, 2026

Improvised music operates through a productive tension: collective intuition on one side, and the constant risk of collapse into formlessness on the other. When a group sustains that balance without resolving it into comfort, the results tend to resist easy classification. Waiting Music, the second release by the Australo-Canadian quartet Open Thread, belongs firmly in that space--an album shaped by real-time decision-making, where continuity is always provisional. Open Thread brings together cellist Peggy Lee, saxophonist Julien Wilson, guitarist Theo Carbo, and ...

Live Review

Jazz Without Borders: The France–Balkans Network Conference in Dijon, France

by Nenad Georgievski
June 12, 2026

Sixth gathering of the Jazz France Balkans Network / D'Jazz dans la Ville Festival (featuring the France Balkans Jazz Band residency and the Sašo Popovski Trio concert) Dijon Conservatory & Cour de Bar at the Palace of the Dukes Dijon, France (Burgundian capital) May 14-15, 2026 Arrival: From Skopje to BurgundyThe distance separating North Macedonia from the historical heart of Burgundy cannot be measured by the mere mechanics of flight hours or transit connections. It ...

Live Review

Jazzkaar Festival 2026

by Nenad Georgievski
June 9, 2026

Jazzkaar festival 2026 Fotografiska / Von Krahl Theatre / Alexela Concert Hall / Philly Joe's Jazz ClubApril 25-May 2, 2026 Tallinn, Estonia Returning to Tallinn for the Jazzkaar festival for a second time felt a bit like visiting an old friend who always has something new to say. The atmosphere was remarkably expansive, reinforcing the festival's reputation as one of the most imaginative cultural gatherings in the Baltic region--and a reminder of why it proved ...

Album Review

Antonio Forcione & Cenk Erdogan: Storytellers

Read "Storytellers" reviewed by Nenad Georgievski

by Nenad Georgievski
April 14, 2026

On Storytellers, the duet album by guitarists Antonio Forcione and Cenk Erdoğan each song is delivered personally to the listener, like a letter. Some albums do not arrive loudly. They sit beside you, quietly, and start talking. This duet feels exactly like that--intimate and conversational, as if you are being invited into a dialogue that began long before the record button was pressed. What makes this project especially moving is the path that led to it. Their story starts ...

Interview

Antonio Forcione and Cenk Erdoğan: A Masterclass in Musical Storytelling

by Nenad Georgievski
March 21, 2026

In the world of contemporary string music, there are collaborations born of convenience, and then there are those born of destiny. The union of Italian acoustic virtuoso Antonio Forcione and Turkish fretless master Cenk Erdogan belongs firmly to the latter. Their debut duo album, Storytellers (Jazz Plus, 2025), is not merely a collection of compositions; it is the culmination of a musical dialogue that has been waiting twenty years to find its voice. The two musicians first crossed ...