Last year 60 Music Meeting participants stayed in Sarajevo during five days and participated in 37 program activities consisting of numerous workshops and talks with international artists – festival guests including joint performances by program participants. Beside the chance to meet colleagues from the region, this program is a good opportunity for participants to engage in future collaborations.

This year Jazz Fest goes a step further with the project organizing it with the support of the Norwegian embassy – from 05th to 10th November Music Meeting will host 80 young artists from B-H, Slovenia, Croatia, Serbia, Montenegro, Macedonia and Kosovo. First application cycle starts today on this link, it will be closed on 20th June, while the second application cycle will be announced at the beginning of September.

“Music Meeting is an extraordinary chance for young artists from the region to learn from top international musicians surrounded by the atmosphere of a festival that has been insisting on high quality of program, production and organization for the last 17 years”, said festival director Edin Zubčević.

Beside the leader, the quartet consisting of pianist Aaron Goldberg, bassist Reuben Rogers and drummer Gregory Hutchinson starts touring tomorrow at a concert in Milan and will perform during next days in France, Spain, the Netherlands and Germany.

Also, Redman is going to perform with bassist Christian McBride at Wigmore Hall in London, where upon he will return to New York for a planed performance on 4th July with the ensemble he recorded his latest album with.

It’s a quartet that beside the saxophonist consists of pianist Brad Mehldau, bassist Larry Grenadier and drummer Brian Blade. The recording included an orchestra as well which made Walking Shadows Redman’s Redman’s first recording to include an orchestral ensemble, which plays on many of the tracks.

The album produced by Mehldau, consisting of 12 balads – Redman’s and Mehldau’s original compositions and compositions by authors like John Mayer, Pino Palladino, John Lennon or Paul McCartney.

JazzReview called the album “stunning” predicting it an almost safe Grammy nomination and win, and numerous magazines and web portals praised it as “divine”, “release of the year” and album of “extraordinary beauty”.

We had the chance to listen to Redman and his collaborators Mehldau, Grenadier, Rodgers and Hutchinson as members of different ensembles on Jazz Fest’s stages during past years, but now listen to Final Hour of the mentioned Joshua Redman album.

At a free afternoon concert in New York’s Church of St. John the Divine Brubeck’s music heritage will be celebrated by performances of  Chick Corea, Paquito D’Rivera, Branford Marsalis, Randy Brecker, Jon Faddis, Roy Hargrove, Roberta Gambarini, Bill Charlap, Renee Rosnes, Rufus Reid, Bobby Militello, Hilary Kole and Brubeck’s sons Darius, Chris, Matthew and Dan.

Brubeck died in December 2012, a day before his 92 birthday. In a seven decade long career he recorded more than 100 albums, while some of his compositions became jazz standards among whom In Your Own Sweet Way and The Duke. Brubeck broke into commercially successful music spheres with his compositions where he established odd time signatures. The composition Take Five that he played with his quartet became a jazz classic of that rhythm.

Brubeck got many awards for his work, among other things, he received the DownBeat Hall of Fame Award in 1994, The Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 1996, and the same prize a year after from the BBC.

The prize in the category Up and Coming Artist of the Year went to pianist Aaron Diehl.

This 28 year old artist, by the New York Times already proclaimed as a ‘revelation’, by  Chicago Tribune called ‘promising discovery’, reinterprets the music of Scott Joplin, Jelly Roll Morton, Art Tatum, Duke Ellington and other big names while paying respect to tradition and forming his own unique sound at the same time.

Diehl has performed with the Wynton Marsalis Septet, with the  Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra, The Boston Symphony Orchestra, Benny Golson, Hank Jones and his interpretation skills have been witnessed by audiences at some of biggest European festivals.

The album The Bespoke Man’s Narrative was released at the beginning of the year. It is his studio debut after two live albums. Meet the young artist by watching a video of his quartet performing a composition from the new album.

At the big concert musicians from six continents are going to perform on Herbie Hancock‘s side. It will be held at Hagia Irene with following musicians performing: George Duke, Robert Glasper, Al Jarreau, Dianne Reeves, Hugh Masekela, Marcus Miller, Terri Lyne Carrington, Joe Louis Walker, Wayne Shorter, Anat Cohen, Husnu Senlendirici, Esperanza Spalding, Terence Blanchard, Branford Marsalis among the others.

International Jazz Day was initiated last year on recommendation of UNESCO and the initiative of Herbie Hancock, UNESCO’s goodwill ambassador. This year’s main event will be held in Istanbul. Beside the big concert at Hagia Irene, this day will be marked with numerous performances, movie projections and music workshops at Turkey’s capital and around the world.

You can watch Istanbul’s Jazz Day celebration here.

During two nights on 18th and 19th June in Toronto, within a program A Portrait in Song, among others vocalists Glen Hansard and Rufus Wainwright will perform together with guitarist Bill Frisell, saxophonist Melvin Butler, percussionist Jeff Haynes, trumpeter Mark Isham and guitarists Chris Thomas and Marvin Sewel. Arrangements for this occasion will be done by drummer Brian Blade and pianist Jon Cowherd.

The music happening A Portrait in Song was prepared in collaboration with this great artist. Concert repertoire will consist of compositions by Joni Mitchell, eight-time Grammy winner and one of the most important and most influential singers of the last 50 years.

At more then 10 locations on the Lake Geneva shore, between 5th and 20th July this year, the festival will gather numerous artists, among whom are Leonard Cohen, Sting, Prince, Green Day, Kraftwerk, Diana Krall, Joe Cocker, Ben Harper and Charlie Musselwhite, Wyclef Jean, Cat Power, Rodriguez, Charles Lloyd with Zakirom Hussainom and Ericom Harlandom, Gregory Porter, Lumineers, Vijay Iyer, Gal Costa, Avishai Cohen Quartet, Shuggie Otis, Charles Bradley, Chucho Valdés and Devendra Banhart.

This year’s festival edition will be the first without founder Claude Nobs who passed in December 2012 after a ski accident, so the final festival night will be marked with a Quincy Jones concert dedicated to the founder of this important European festival.

Two top jazz musicians, vocalist Tony Bennett and pianist Dave Brubeck performed on the same night with their bands 51 years ago at American president’s residence playing a concert for Kennedy family members and White House employees, where they played few standards together as well.

The concert footage was considered lost until last December when it was discovered at Sony Music Entertainment Group archives few weeks after Dave Brubeck’s death.

Brubeck played that night with a quartet with Paul Desmond on alto saxophone, Eugene Wright on bass and Joe Morello on drums, while Bennett was accompanied by pianist Ralph Sharon, bassist Hal Gaylord and drummer Billy Exner.

After that Washington concert Bennett and Brubeck shared the stage for the first time 47 years later at the 2009 Newport Jazz Festival when they played That Old Black Magic.

The album will be released under the name The White House Sessions, Live 1962 consisting of following compositions:

1. Introduction – William B. Williams
2. Take Five
3. Band introduction
4. Nomad
5. Thank You (Dziekuje)
6. Castilian Blues
(The Dave Brubeck Quartet)

7. Introduction – William B. Williams
8. Just In Time (from Bells Are Ringing)
9. Small World (from Gypsy)
10. Make Someone Happy (from Do Re Mi)
11. Rags To Riches
12. One For My Baby (And One More For The Road) (from the RKO film, The Sky’s the Limit)
13. (I Left My Heart In) San Francisco
(Tony Bennett band)

14. Lullaby Of Broadway (from the Warner Bros./Vitaphone film, Golddiggers Of 1935)
15. Chicago (That Toddlin’ Town)
16. That Old Black Magic
17. There Will Never Be Another You (from the 20th Century-Fox film, Iceland)
(Tony Bennett with The Dave Brubeck Trio)

The album consists of 12 compositions by memorable jazz trumpeters among which are Dizzy Gillespie’s Manteca, Miles Davis’ All Blues and Don Cherry’s Universal Mother.

The Indian percussionist recorded this album with contemporary masters of the trumpet among whom are Norwegian Nils Petter Molvaer, Lebanese Ibrahim Maalouf and Italian Paolo Fresu.

Gurtu and Cherry met in the 70’s in Italy after Gurtu’s arrival from native India. They soon started to work together and Don Cherry became the one who encouraged Gurtu to carry out his own artistic visions.

Trilok Gurtu is on UK tour till middle of May. Local audience listened to him in 2009 at the 13th edition of Jazz Fest Sarajevo when he performed with his ensemble.

This is what he said about the new album.

“I think up to now people have known me as a violinist and vocalist. I guess now people are going to know me as a composer”, said Shaw in a phone interview for Billboard after she won the prestigious award that is being given every year to outstanding American journalists, literates and musicians for works published in the previous year.

Even though the Pulitzer Prize is being awarded to experienced composers and musicians, Caroline Shaw deserved it for her piece she composed for her vocal octet Roomful of Teeth, an ensemble that can be described as baroque and contemporary at the same time. They released their first album of the same name last October with all four movements of the awarded 26 minutes suite.

The award that contains 10.000 USD prize money brings a lot of media attention as well. Among this year’s Pulitzer Prize for Music finalists were a jazz musician we already had the chance to watch at the Jazz Fest Sarajevo, Wadada Leo Smith with his work Ten Freedom Summers, we have been writing about, and former Pulitzer winner, composer Aaron Jay Kernis with his composition Pieces of Winter Sky.

Listen to one movement of the Partita.