40th Belgrade Jazz Festival, Serbia

The Belgrade Jazz Festival always offers a strong international line-up – from legendary performers to often astonishing rising stars – and despite financial constraints its 40th birthday programme produced a great deal of truly magnificent music.

It opened at the large MTS Dvorana concert hall with New Zealand-born pianist and arranger Alan Broadbent leading the RTS Big Band in a satisfying set of his arrangements, with Croatian pianist Matija Dedic and Italian trombonist Gianluca Petrella as guest soloists. Petrella – usually a fiery player – blended perfectly with the band on Broadbent’s composition “Journey Home”, and Dedic spun a long solo piano exploration on the mellow piece Broadbent wrote as a tribute to his one-time band boss, Woody Herman, “Woody n’ Me”.

The excitement level rose considerably with the following concert starring the brilliant French-American singer Cecile McLorin Salvant and her trio, with highlights including Dianne Reeves’ song “Mister” and Kurt Weill’s “Barbara Song”, in which Cecile demonstrated her quite extraordinary tonal range. Cole Porter’s “I Get A Kick Out Of You” was unleashed at a furiously fast pace – with superb playing by pianist Sullivan Fortner, bassist Yasushi Nakamura and drummer Kyle Poole.

The Kate Bush song “Heathcliff, It’s Me, I’m Cathy” was a quite astonishing evocation of both lyrics and theme, with Cecile’s solo voice exploring the music at length and with captivating passion before the rhythm section joined in to bring the show to a climax.

Cecile brings a great sense of fun to her performances, as does fellow American clarinetist Anat Cohen, with her group Quartetinho at the smaller Dom Omladine concert hall. Outstanding pieces included her own composition “The Night Owl”, and Thelonious Monk’s “Trinkle Tinkle”. Her pianist and accordionist Vitor Goncalves, her bassist and guitarist Tal Mashiach, and drummer-vibraphonist James Shipp brought a great deal of musical colour as well as dynamic drive to the set.

Anat declared to the audience that she is a great admirer of the French soprano saxophonist Emile Parisien, and how right her judgement is, for Emile is one of the most dazzling performers on the international scene. His quartret – with pianist Julien Touery, bassist Ivan Gelugne and drummer Julien Loutelier – gave a stupendous performance later that evening in the upstairs club Amerikana. Parisien uses electronics in a creative but subtle way to enhance the texture of his music, but Italian trombone master Petrella is currently heavily into thumping electronics and deep beats with his project Cosmic Renaissance. I have enjoyed the trombonist’s fiery improvising hugely in the past, and I’m sure I will in the future, but there was too little musical light and shade in this relentless show.

I was surprised that I also had reservations about the performance by U.S. saxophonist James Carter, a hugely capable and massively energetic player, who presented a quartet tribute to the legendary Eddie Lockjaw Davis. While expertly conveying Lockjaw’s harmonic style and rhythmic drive, Carter rather over-indulged in squeaking and honking to raise the musical temperature.

Pianist Jason Moran, however, created a gloriously tasteful solo tribute to Duke Ellington, with imaginative explorations of works including “Black And Tan Fantasy”, “I Got It Bad And That Ain’t Good”, and “It Don’t Mean A Thing . . . If It Ain”t Got That Swing”. He also powerfully explored the lowest octaves of the piano for a long percussive improvisation . . . this could only evoke one thought in my head: “Such Sweet Thunder”.

American alto saxophonist Rudresh Mahanthappa always delights – his multi-noted style with its strong infusion of Indian harmonies, sweeps the music along, and he was ably supported in his Hero Trio by bassist Phil Donkin and drummer Tim Angulo. Highlights included Charlie Parker’s “Red Cross” and Keith Jarrett’s “The Wind-Up” from the pianist’s ECM collaboration with Jan Garbarek, Belonging.

There were highs and lows in the set by pianist Kris Davis’s group Diatom Ribbons – celebrated drummer Terri Lyne Carrington, bassist Nick Dunston, and electronics performer Val Jeanty. The set hovered between powerful interplay, and long stretches where too little happened.

A Serbian Allstars show at Dom Omladine celebrated the considerable talents of mainly young Balkan musicians, including some truly outstanding soloing by flautist Milena Jancuric (a brilliant Berklee graduate and certainly a name to watch for in the future), altoist Luka Ignjatovic, trumpeter Ivan Radivojevic, and tenor saxophonist Rastko Obradovic. And the international media team covering the festival had the bonus of special private performances at the nearby RTS radio studios, with these and other artists including bassist/electronics performer Uros Spasojevic, singer Viktor Tumbas, and the group Schime.

The festival wrapped up with a strong double bill: the Bill Frisell Four – featuring the guitarist with saxophonist Greg Tardy, pianist Gerald Clayton and drummer Johnathan Blake – and the Buena Vista Allstars.

Frisell announced no tune titles, but among them were Kenny Wheeler’s “Angel Song” and the Billy Strayhorn ballad “Blood Count” – eloquently played by Tardy – before the guitarist wrapped up the show with the Burt Bacharach pop song “What The World Needs Now”.

The Buena Vista Allstars were missing their lead singer Ibrahim Ferrer Junior, who had been taken ill, but his duties were taken over by Barbarito Torres and Angel Aguiar. The vast concert hall was, happily, sold out . . . but its narrow aisles offer little wriggle room for dancing, so most of the wriggling had to be done in the seated position.