MOSCOW, July 20 – Trend Wire. The third St. Petersburg International Jazz Festival of People’s Artist of the Russian Federation Igor Butman will be held from July 20 to 26 in the northern capital and will bring together more than 600 leading musicians from Russia and foreign countries who will give more than 170 concerts.
Thus, the festival will open with a jazz parade in the Summer Garden of the Russian Museum on Monday. Members of the groups of the two capitals will unite into one large jazz orchestra, among them the Moscow Jazz Orchestra of Igor Butman, the St. Petersburg Jazz Orchestra of Sergei Bogdanov, Jazz Philharmonic Orchestra, Orchestra Beat and Mussorgsky Jazz Orchestra. In the evening of the same day, the Moscow Jazz Orchestra under the direction of Igor Butman and Sergei Mazaev will present their new joint program in the Great Hall Philharmonic named after Shostakovich.
Open-air concerts will take place at several venues in St. Petersburg: in the Yusupov Garden, on the Arts Square, in the Tauride Garden, in the Long Lake park and in the Lower Park of the Peterhof Museum-Reserve.
This year, participants in the festival will be Grammy Award winner Nicholas Payton and his trio from the USA, Aglaya Shilovskaya and LRK Trio, jazz vocalist Ezgi Alash and the flagships of the modern Turkish scene Akra Jazz Band, Igor Butman Quartet, Valery Syutkin, Pyotr Nalich, Boris Berezovsky, Vadim Eilenkrig and the Chamber Orchestra of the Kaliningrad Philharmonic, VIA “Proletarian Tango”, singers Fantine, Varvara Ubel and Zhenya Lyubich, as well as the “golden duet” of jazz masters David Goloshchekin and Andrei Kondakov.
The closing of the festival will traditionally take place in the Great Hall of the Shostakovich Philharmonic, where Igor Butman and Sergei Stepanchenko will present the musical and literary performance “Leonid Utesov. Thank you, heart!”
For the first time, an official cruise and jazz program is launching as part of the St. Petersburg International Jazz Festival. Jazz groups from St. Petersburg and Moscow will take to the deck, including the Stankov jazz Band, Newzette, the Ariadna Yurakova Ensemble, and the Sofia Shustrova Ensemble. In two hours, the liner will pass by the key historical landmarks of the center of St. Petersburg and enter the expanses of the Gulf of Finland, offering guests a view of the stadium and the futuristic Lakhta Center.
In addition, during the festival there will be an extensive educational program, a series of lectures, master classes and creative meetings. At the House of Books, guests will enjoy lectures on the music of the 20th century, the creative path of Miles Davis, lectures from singers Arina Faul, Sasha Almazova, a creative meeting with Zhenya Lyubich and a vinyl evening with listening to cult records from different eras of jazz. A master class on jazz improvisation will be conducted by the famous St. Petersburg musician Andrey Zimovets.
By tradition, a large musical club program will take place: at the Philharmonic of Jazz Music, the Igor Butman Jazz Club, the 48 Chairs bar-restaurant, The Hat bar, the JFC and Police Station clubs, the Nola, EtoBar and Laika bars.
As part of the festival, with the support of the Presidential Fund for Cultural Initiatives, a Jazz Composers Competition and the presentation of the All-Russian Professional Jazz Prize will also be held.
The Saint Petersburg Jazz Festival was first held in 2024 and immediately established itself as the city’s largest musical event. The festival is organized by the Association of Jazz Musicians and is supported by the Presidential Fund for Cultural Initiatives, the Government of St. Petersburg and the Igor Butman Foundation.
Source: RIA