In the year of Olympic Games and numerous cultural events in the capital of Great Britain, the London Jazz Festival has pulled out all the stops to create the biggest festival yet, with a feast of headline names including Sonny Rollins, John MaLaughlin, Jan Garbarek, Trilok Gurtu, Brad Mehldau, Bill Frisell and Salif Keita.
The festival will be held from 9 – 18 November in more than 30 venues, in the majority of London’s major concert halls, jazz clubs and venues associated with the music.
Although London doesn’t lack high quality musical and cultural events over the year, anent the forthcoming Olympics, most eminent names of the music scene will perform in this capital till the end of 2012, and the London Jazz Festival will be a worthy competitor to other cultural events happening in the city.
The Festival will traditionally kick off with their Jazz Voice concert at The Barbican. At this years show named Celebrating a Century of Song, composer and trumpeter Guy Barker will introduce a self arranged repertoire, performed by a 40-piece orchestra plus numerous vocalists.
During 10 festival days, among others, will perform the British guitarist John McLaughlin introducing his 4th Dimension project, female singer Melody Gardot, “Africa’s golden voice” Salif Keita, saxophone players Jan Garbarek, Sonny Rollins and John Surman. In London are going to perform musicians who played on stages of our festival as well, like the trio of pianist Brad Mehldau, percussionist Trilok Gurtu, Armenian pianist Tigran Hamasyan or bass player Etienne M’bappe.
American guitarist Bill Frisell will introduce The Great Flood Project with the same name film by Bill Morrison, evoking the 1927 great flood of the river Mississippi.