By: Staff
Maria Schneider, Photo: Wikipedia
The 43rd Annual Voll-Damm Barcelona International Jazz Festival is set to kick off this coming Sunday, October 16th and will run all the way until Thursday, December 1st, 2011. According to a press release, month-and-a-half long celebration will feature performances by many great artists, including Maria Schneider Orchestra, Rudresh Mahanthappa Samdhi, Vijay Iyer Trio, Pat Metheny with Larry Grenadier and Bill Stewart, Eliane Elias Brazilian Quartet, bassist Dave Holland with Flamenco guitar legend Pepe Habichuela, Joshua Redman and Brad Mehldau, Randy Weston and his African Rhythms Trio, Madeleine Peyroux, Michel Camilo ‘Mano a Mano’ with Giovanni Hidalgo and Charles Flores, Buena Vista Social Club with Omara Portuondo, Michael Janisch-Aruan Ortiz Quintet with Greg Osby and Raynald Colom, and Ken Vandermark’s Made to Break.
The festival has something for everyone with 60+ concerts and artists not just from Italy, but also Luísa Sobral from Portugal, The Pepper Pots from Catalonia and 16-year-old sensation Andrea Motis from Barcelona Marcin Wasilewski from Poland, as well as Paolo Conte, Tigran Hamasyan Trio, Ryuichi Sakamoto, and Jaques Morelenbaum.
This marathon of a jazz concert series will also present world class Italian Jazz performers in a weeklong celebration beginning on November 7th. The Italian week will feature Danilo Rea with Flavio Boltro, Giovanni Guidi and Gianluca Petrella, Gabriele Mirabassi Trio, Enrico Rava Tribe, Omar Sosa with Paolo Fresu, and Stefano Bollani.
This year’s Gold Medal Prize, which has become an honored tradition of the Barcelona Jazz Festival, will go to Maria Schneider. She will be the fourth recipient of the award (previous honorees have been Bebo Valdés, Wayne Shorter and Sonny Rollins), and is the first female and youngest to receive it. Barcelona Jazz Festival artistic director Joan Cararach said of Maria, “I like to think Maria’s orchestra and her musicians are like the Duke Ellington Orchestra of our time.”
For a complete schedule of events, please visit:
www.barcelonajazzfestival.com
or
barcelonajazzfestival.blogspot.com
