A dreadful tragedy cut short the Pancevo Jazz Festival, held in a town north of Belgrade, Serbia. Three days of national mourning were declared in the region after a concrete canopy collapsed at a railway station in the city of Novi Sad, killing 14 people and injuring others.
The incident happened on the first day of the festival, and two concerts that night were allowed to go ahead in the town’s Cultural Centre before the strict curfew on music began at midnight. It was originally declared that only one day of mourning would allow the festival to continue on the Sunday, but that rule was changed, meaning that two of the three days of the festival could not go ahead, with artists including US saxophone legend David Murray and trumpeter Fabrizio Bosso and their quartets prevented from performing.
Some of those concerts were being arranged for the future, but the three-day ban on music has left the festival in a desperate financial plight, as all the events had been sold out. However, the festival’s single evening opened with great sensitivity. Israeli pianist Shai Maestro began his solo performance with words of condolence, before sitting quietly at the keyboard for a few minutes, and then starting his improvisations with single isolated notes, developing very gradually into gently played chordal clusters and eventually into a tumult of harmonic shifts and flurries of expertly interwoven single lines and chords, Maestro then developed the free improvisation to comprehensively rework songs including Jerome Kern’s “All The Things You Are” and Charlie Chaplin’s “Smile”.
Francesco Ciniglio – Photograph copyright John Watson/jazzcamera.co.uk
The performance reached an even higher level when he was joined on stage by the sensational Italian drummer Francesco Ciniglio, who was originally only scheduled to perform in the quartet of the following act, American singer Robin McKelle. The Maestro-Ciniglio duet was a masterpiece of improvisational intensity, with an almost volcanic quality.
McKelle is a smooth and capable singer, and her tribute to Ella Fitzgerald had many fine moments, with classic songs including “Something’s Got To Give”, “Caravan” and “The Nearness Of You.” However, another unscheduled duet took her show to a much higher level when Maestro joined her very fine pianist Laurent Coulondre for keyboard duets – all four hands on the same keyboard – which inspired McKelle to far greater creative heights in the bossa nova “No More Blues”, with fine support from bassist Geraud Portal and drummer Ciniglio.
Robin McKelle – Photograph copyright John Watson/jazzcamera.co.uk
A jam session had been due to take place in the centre’s foyer after the singer’s concert, but that had to be cancelled as it would have breached the curfew. The organisers will be crossing their fingers that improved funding will be provided to enable the festival to continue next year.
