21/10/24 It didn’t have to be the open-air stages, often the sideshows had Jazz & The City In the last few days (October 17th to 20th) there was a special flair and guaranteed closeness between musicians and audience.
The brothers of the monastery on Kapuzinerberg, for example, handed out freshly baked apple cake after the concert by the Munich Wedding Band. Exactly 111 steps down from the monastery, a good thirty people gathered early on Saturday evening (October 19th) for a “hidden track” with the American Kit Downes in the Johanneskirche am Imberg. Yes, there is that too: a jazzer who also knows his way around a historical organ and elicits unusual sounds and harmonies from it.
“Very likeable artist, impressed by church and organ,” said a voice from the audience. And some of the listeners were in this oldest church in Salzburg on the right bank of the Salzach for the first time. During his performance in the Kollegienkirche, Kit Downes had significantly more keys and pipes at his disposal.
“A music and performance festival of great togetherness, extraordinary encounters and special vibes,” says Anastasia Wolkenstein, artistic director since last year Jazz & The Citythe festival with free entry that has been organized by the Salzburg Old Town Association for a quarter of a century. This year we felt this “more intensely than ever before”. What is not new is that the term “jazz” is interpreted very broadly and includes cross-genre performances. This year, for the first time, local young music ensembles joined the international artists. For example, the big band from the Musisches Gymnasium played on the large open-air stage on Residenzplatz.
The balance sheet of Jazz & The City: The seventy festival acts at twenty venues with around a hundred musicians reached around 25,000 visitors. The greatest variety imaginable, from the start with the Andromeda Mega Express Orchestra – which also brilliantly mastered the challenge of the special acoustics of the Kollegienkirche at the midnight concert the next day – to the Latin fireworks of the Cuban pianist Harold López-Nussa with the Swiss harmonica artist Gregoire Maret. Through the constant exchange between musicians during the Hidden Tracks walks, the sessions in the House of Impro in the basement of the Blaue Gans, which always lead to all-star meetings, and the new “invites” series with spontaneous musician encounters Jazz & The City his profile.
“This concert changed my life,” said one visitor after Ganna’s performance with Tal Arditi, which moved many to tears. “That was the best thing I’ve ever been to Jazz & The City heard,” said another audience voice after the concert of the upcoming superstar Reuben James on the Residenzplatz. From the precise piano post bop of Joanna Duda, the experimental percussion excursions of Simon Popp or Vernon Chatelein, to the lyrical guitar playing of Phillip Schiepek, to the funk thunder of the US quartet FORQ and the enthusiastic and convincing performances of two Salzburg student bigs Bands (Musisches Gymnasium, Borromäum) – many concerts found an enthusiastic audience.
The venues logically give a lot of flair, from the historic halls of the Marionette Theater and the DomQuartier, to the intimate atmosphere of the Toihaus and the Jazzit Music Club, the jazz cellars of the Markussaal and the Arthotel Blaue Gans in the Getreidegasse, right up to the end Open-air stages on the Residenzplatz and in the Mirabell Gardens, crowned by the wonderful late summer weather. “Master improvisers such as the trombonist Nils Wogram, the trumpeter Volker Götze, the baritone saxophonist Almut Schlichting and the percussionist Evi Filippou were almost unstoppable and played almost nonstop for four days,” said the organizers. (Old Town Association/dpk-krie)
Images: Old Town Association / Henry Schulz (3); Peter Haslwanter (1)
