The Jazz in Kiev-2009 Festival is a symbolic event, not only for the city, but for entire Ukraine. The worthy cause championed by the national jazz guru Oleksii Kohan was crowned with success, and a new festival will take place in Kyiv next autumn. Jazz will no longer be a rare guest in the capital.
The first band to perform on the stage of the former October Palace, now the International Center of Culture and Arts, was the Polish Bester Quartet, formerly known as The Cracow Klezmer Band. One of the members is our compatriot Oleh Dyiak, who plays the clarinet, while Jaroslaw Bester is the accordionist, Jaroslaw Tyrala plays the violin, and Wojciech Front plays the double bass.
Their performance enchants the audience, and it seems that the notes are penetrating inside, making your heart beat faster. This music is abosrbed instinctively. Incidentally, the Klezmer music was initially meant to be performed at weddings, so it definitely encodes some sacrament of a love union. This music has absorbed the Jewish traditional melodies, Slavic and Balkan song traditions, as well as German military marches, urban love songs, and many other things. The surprising interlacing of sounds, which range from Eastern enigmas to Slavic spaciousness, in the music played by the Bester Quartet make the instruments sound in a totally different way. The violin is laughing, whereas the double bass reproduces wind gusts. This kind of jazz has something in common with Marc Chagall’s pictures — it is soaring, folkloric, full of mysteries, while still simple and clear to everyone.
The first jazz day finished with the performance of the legendary, star-studded Mike Stern Band. Besides Mike himself, a famous fusion guitarist, the band includes other renowned masters: drummer Dave Wekl, contrabass player Chris Minh Doky, and trumpeter Randy Brecker, the winner of Grammy Award in the Best Jazz Album-2009 nomination. The audience exploded with applause throughout the concert. Emotions were impossible to hold back. The Mike Stern Band played encore several times in succession, and in the end of the program the audience rushed toward the stage with cries of delight resembling those of Dynamo Kyiv’s fans. This was the first time in the last decade that jazz bands enjoyed such a huge success in Kyiv.
The second festival day was dedicated to Ukrainian jazz, so the organizers invited Sviatoslav Vakarchuk (the frontman of Okean Elzy) to perform on stage. Despite the apparent dissimilarity of the stereotyped notions of rock musicians and jazz, the link between the two turned out to be very close. Vakarchuk’s project Vnochi (In the Night), presented within the festival’s framework, is a fusion of jazz, ethnic, and symphonic music.
Naturally, the second day audience consisted mostly of Vakarchuk’s admirers, for whom it was important to hear and see their idol. He sang to the accompaniment of a symphonic orchestra playing behind his back, and the overall result was a high-level European performance, although, for some reason, some song lyrics were dedicated to gastronomic theme: “I cannot eat, I cannot drink, etc.” To jazz lovers’ joy, he performed several jazz compositions. Indeed, the daring experiment proved that his voice is versatile, and he may treat music lovers to many more music surprises.
His performance was preceded by his “godchildren,” the quintet of Denys Dudko, one of Ukraine’s best double bass players. The quintet includes renowned jazz drummer Alyk Fantaiev, pianist Oleksii Saranchyn, trumpeter Denys Adu, and saxophonist Bohdan Humeniuk. Many Okean Elzy’s buffs know Denys Dudko as the band’s bass guitarist. I want to wish the debutants success; they gave a worthy performance, which definitely had drive. However, I should note that loud playing is not always good, and it was difficult for Vakarchuk’s admirers who like his non-jazz repertoire to adjust to ear-splitting, screaming sounds. The most memorable moment of their performance was the innovative performance of the drummer, who was producing sounds from paper scraps and cellophane bags.
The third concert of Jazz in Kiev was marked by the performance of legendary musicians. Perhaps, the concerts of the Steve Gadd & Friends quartet and the band Spyro Gyra were the culmination of the festival. The members of Steve Gadd & Friends (Steve Gadd, Joey DeFrancesco, Ronnie Cuber, and Paul Bollenback) are superb musicians, and at the moment there are only a handful jazzmen who can match them in mastery. It was evident that the musicians themselves took pleasure in performing on stage and the sincere and rapturous reaction of the audience. This may have been the reason why Bollenback went as far as playing the guitar with his teeth.
After a break, the palace’s stage burst with a real jazz shower. Spyro Gyro, the founders of smooth jazz who have 11 Grammy Award nominations and over 30 successful albums under their belt, won the audience with ease. Well known compositions came one after another, the saxophone in the hands of the group’s founder Jay Beckenstein was performing miracles while the incredible solo of the drummer Bonny B made the entire audience get on their feet and dance. African beats, wild energy, and rhythmic tunes hypnotized fans. This wild jazz gave such a focused supply of happiness that I wished it would never end.
