5th Greek Jazz Panorama

The groups taking part in the 5th Greek Jazz Panorama are impressively varied. Indeed, this year’s event goes beyond presenting to actively encouraging a fertile stylistic pluralism which combines the contemporary with the traditional to feed into the vivacity and dynamism of the Greek jazz scene.

The Magnanimus Trio get proceedings underway on the first evening of the Festival. Their musical world contains elements of modal jazz in conversation with other contemporary and traditional idioms in minimalist compositions, songs and improvised music. They are followed by the BalaRom Trio, joined on the night by the Bulgarian kaval virtuoso, Nedyalko Nedyalkov. BalaRom -which is to say Pantelis Stoikos on the trumpet and keyboards, Kyriakos Tapakis on the oud and Loukas Metaxas on percussion- surrender themselves, with Nedyalkov’s help, to an orgiastic soundgasm as they play their way through the Balkans at the speed of light with the precision of a magician who knows how to charm an audience onto its feet.

Day Two of the Panorama kicks off with Alekos Vretos Quartet and their guest, the Azeri pianist, Elchin Shirinof. Vretos ventures into uncharted territory on his oud, leaving a powerful taste of jazz in his wake accompanied by a subtle aroma of the Arab musical tradition produced by the interaction between musicians from different worlds.They are followed by the the Tilemachos Moussas Trio performing its World Dog project with Lambros Filippou. From rock to baroque and from jazz to Epirote polyphonics and back again, Moussas and Filippou create new sounds by hand -hybrids which blaze new trails, dispel preconceptions and spread sonic flights of fancy which electrify the audience.

On Day Three, we get to hear the sound of a trio straight out of New York: the Greek leader, drummer George Spanos, with two musicians who played for many years with the legendary Rashied Ali: the American saxophonist Lawrence Clark on tenor horn and the Dutch double bassist Joris Teepe. Together, they will dive into the deep waters of African-American music—in fact, into the most difficult and creative part of that tradition: the avant-garde scene from that most legendary of decades, the nineteen sixties.