Avantgarde Jazz Festival, Rovinj,Croatia, May-June

Amira Medunjanin, the Bosnian-Herzegovinian artist who has become a synonym for sevdalinka – the traditional Bosnian folk music - and won the hearts of the audiences of the region, will release a new album at the end of April 2014 under the title of “Silk and Stone”. The album was announced with the single and video “Eleno kerko”, recorded in Zagreb during December 2013 in the studio of the Vatroslav Lisinski Concert Hall. Many excellent musicians joined Amira in the recording of the album: long-time collaborators, the pianist Bojan Zulfikarpašić and double bass player Nenad Vasilić, then Yurdal Osman Tokcan (oud), Hakan Güngör (qanun), Boško Jović (guitar) and Stefan Horvat (double bass). Besides sevdalinka she also records songs from other countries in the region, especially those relating to traditional songs from Macedonia and Serbia. Amira points out that these songs, regardless of their origin, share the same sensibility and strength of emotions which awaken within the listeners as well as the performers functioning as storytellers. Each song carries its own story interwoven with metaphors and conveys in a very subtle way the message of the true values in life.

Known as the Bosnian Billy Holiday, the singer Amira Medunjanin specialises in performing traditional Bosnian music – sevdalinka, which she learnt from her mother who also told her stories connected with this characteristic musical fairy tale. However, she went one step further from merely reproducing this music in the conventional manner. In fact, she devoted herself to the investigation of the creative possibilities of expression and created a unique approach to this musical idiom.

Her performances are meditative, honest, subtle, but deeply experienced, and great musicality and simplicity are felt in them, inherent only to those who succeed to penetrate into the core of the matter which they deal with. In the same way she meticulously approached the selection of collaborators, searching for years for those close to her way of expression, who share the same ideas and who could transfer them into music in the best way. With them she turns centuries-old music into a new musical language based upon the respect for tradition, as well as the character of its people. She found the ideal collaborator in Bojan Zulfirkapašić (Bojan Z), the Bosnian-Herzegovinian pianist who has lived and worked in Paris for many years, where he has made an international career as a respectable jazz and world music musician, in which he often enriches his own expression with elements of Bosnian musical tradition. It is this synergy with him that help Amira to achieve an organic connection with tradition and today’s musical moment, archaic and modern, with an ever present respect for her own musical heritage.

Amira Medunjanin has collaborated with the famous group “Mostar Sevdah Reunion”, but she has also created her own career as the leader of a group recording their own albums which have received great reviews in Europe, particularly in British music circles. Her popularity is also verified by the fact that some of her albums have been released by the famous record label Harmonia Mundi. Amira Medunjanin released her debut album “Rosa” in 2005. She received already for her first album great reviews throughout Europe, notably in Great Britain, where it appeared on several lists for album of the year. After that came a live album “Live @ Jazz Fest Sarajevo”, and then two more studio albums, “Zumra” (2010) and “Amulette” (2011). Her new album is anticipated with great curiosity, because to date she has shown in an interesting way how she ponders sevdah and that there is always room for elements of jazz music in her performances.

Multi-instrumentalist and composer James Carter was born in 1969 in Detroit, in the American state of Michigan. Although he has been proclaimed multiple times as the best baritone saxophonist in the world, he also plays sopranino, soprano, alto, tenor and bass saxophone, double bass, bass clarinet and flute, with no less creativity. Besides the recognition from audiences and musical colleagues, he has also received high quality acknowledgements from critics who have often put him at the top of the list.

 

After Wynton Marsalis noticed him in the mid 1980s, Carter experienced a global promotion during the 1990s, when he arrived in New York at the instigation of Lester Bowie from Detroit, where he began his career. He played in Lester Bowies’s New York Organ Ensemble, Julius Hemphill’s Saxophone Sextet and the Art Ensemble of Chicago, with which he performed as a guest in Europe for the first time, as part of their blues project with Chicago musicians. Later he played with the greatest jazz stars such as Herbie Hancock, Betty Carter, Sonny Rollins and other orchestras like The Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra, The Mingus Big Band and The Carnegie Hall Jazz Band.

 

Thanks to his ability to adapt and his interest in the entire heritage of jazz, Carter played the legendary Ben Webster with great success and persuasiveness in the film “Kansas City” by Robert Altman, for which he received praise due to the music which was performed by leading musicians of the global jazz scene. As the leader of a band he has recorded a number of albums, on some of which some of the most significant jazz musicians of all generations and styles have played as guests.

 

James Carter is the leader of several respected groups with which he performs various styles of music, from funk, through bebop and gypsy swing to the devout iconic musicians such as Billie Holiday and Django Reinhardt. How much he is admired by the jazz communities can be seen from the list of musicians who have expressed respect for him in collaborating in the recording of some twenty or so of Carter’s albums. Amongst them are Harry “Sweets” Edison, Buddy Tate, Johnny Griffin, Dee Dee Bridgewater, Dave Holland, Hamiet Bluiett, David Murray and Regina Carter.

 

His Organ Trio is one of the most exciting outfits on today’s jazz scene. The trio plays mercilessly and boldly, surrendering themselves to inspiration and playing with maximum intensity – we rarely hear such fire. One can feel the joy of playing, the enjoyment in mutual communication, and the challenges in their performances. Particularly exciting are the dialogues that he achieves with collaborators – full of spirit and humour, teasing, invitation… Completely wrapped up in music and stimulated by adrenaline and in moments when some other member of the group is playing a solo, Carter fires off blasts of elation from his saxophone not suppressing the impulses which occur at special moments of collective inspiration.

Date:

24.05.2014.

Venue:

Adris concert hall
Rovinj, Croatia

Start time:

20,00h