Cerkno – a town in the middle of picturesque nature: beautiful, breathtaking and harmonious, but at the same time unpredictable, idiosyncratic and whimsical. The Jazz Cerkno festival has been bringing exactly this kind of music to curious listeners since 1996. This year will be no different, with ten jazz concerts taking place from May 16-18. As is typical for the festival, we invite creative musicians who take jazz as a starting point for a bold confrontation with a diverse range of other genres and creative approaches. This year, the festival stages will offer combinations of jazz with many other genres, from experimental and avant-garde electronics, through atmospheric, film score-like minimalist music, to inspired free and spiritual jazz and Ethiopian traditional music. All three Slovenian bands will have their premiere performances in Cerkno and will present their new compositions for the first time.
Some time ago, Cene Resnik and Samo Šalamon founded a trio with the Belgian drummer Samuel Ber. Especially for our festival, this trio will be joined by one of the most important American double bassists, Michael Formanek. The Resnik / Šalamon / Formanek / Ber Quartet will kick off the festival with a combination of improvised and composed music. This is followed by the members of the “supergroup” Jones Jones who are well known from playing in legendary bands. Mark Dresser (Anthony Braxton Quartet), Larry Ochs (Rova Saxophone Quartet) and Vladimir Tarasov (Ganelin Trio) performed as a trio for the first time in 2006 and have been winning over audiences and critics with completely improvised performances ever since. The evening will be rounded off by the new Slovenian band A.G.A.T. composed of Aleš Valentinčič – Brdonch, Gal Furlan, Andrej Kobal and Timi Vremec. Their music is based on the interaction between organic instruments and the processing of their sounds with electronics.
Friday’s music program on the main stage will begin with a concert by the Italian trio The Elephant led by trumpeter Gabriele Mitelli, who combines jazz with experimental interventions. The music of the trio skillfully moves between cinematic music and modern jazz supported by electronics. The music of the Viennese trio Radian is similarly exploratory. When creating music, the members of the trio strike a balance between analog and digital, between ambient passages and complex rhythms, often close to post-rock. The second day of the festival will conclude with spiritual jazz, as played by the London trio Ill Considered, devoted to freely improvised jazz, composed on the spot at rehearsals or during a concert. According to DownBeat, the band “effortlessly blends wide-ranging influences – from jazz freedom to punkish angst to spiritual mother Africa”.
On Saturday afternoon, the traditional concert will take place in the music school, at which the Serbian reed player Jasna Jovićević will perform. During her solo performance entitled ILLUSION OF FREEDOM the musician will question the “illusion of freedom in free improvised music”. The program on the main stage will commence with the Rok Zalokar ZHLEHTET collective, which draws on the tradition of spiritual jazz and combines acoustic and electronic sound. In Cerkno, the band will premiere a new suite for octet, which will present the band in orchestral colors. It will be followed by the singer-pianist duo Sofia Jernberg and Alexander Hawkins MUSHO, which combines Ethiopian songs from the singer’s homeland with elements of avant-garde classical music, unconventional vocal techniques and jazz improvisation. American saxophonist Darius Jones, one of the leading American alto saxophonists, will be presenting his original project for the first time in Slovenia, providing a fiery conclusion to the festival. The Darius Jones Trio (including bassist Chris Lightcap and drummer Gerald Cleaver) will present the highly anticipated upcoming album Legend of e’Boi (The Hypervigilant Eye), due out this fall at AUM Fidelity.
As part of the accompanying program, we have prepared six events this year. The opening day of the festival will see the launch of the project Under Beech Trees, a geolocation sound walk and installation by the author Ida Hiršenfelder (beepblip) in the Cerkno Museum. The Slovenian-German Gal Golob Trio will perform at the Jazz Incubator #2 residency. This year’s Jazzohod (guided hike and concert) will feature a concert by Iztok Koren, who will play at the writer France Bevk’s homestead in Zakojca. The magazine Nova Muska prepared a presentation of the book Good Morning, Jazzwomen for its podcast and Miha Zadnikar will talk with the author Jasna Jovićević. This year’s music workshop for children with a final concert, held under the mentorship of Boštjan Gombač, is titled Prepared Piano. At the street concerts, we will listen to the TačMi Brass Band from Cerkno.
You are cordially invited to the 29th edition of the Jazz Cerkno Festival, which will take place between May 16 and 18 at Star plac and other locations. Pre-sale festival tickets are available until May 15. During the festival, the hotel in Cerkno will be closed, so we advise you to book an overnight stay elsewhere as soon as possible given that the Cerkno region has limited accommodation options.
29. Jazz Cerkno – a festival of breathtaking and harmonious, yet unpredictable and whimsical music!