Murcia Jazz Festival: 2020 programming – The GO! Guide

The city recovers the festival: Murcia Jazz Festival with a program of eight concerts in halls, a parade and a 12-hour marathon of Murcian jazz.

A total of eight concerts in halls, in addition to parades, swing and jazz matinees and a 12-hour marathon of Murcian jazz make up the Murcia Jazz Festival program. The Plaza de la Universidad will host two morning swing and blues.

The festival is held from February 29 to March 28 in different spaces of the municipality of Murcia, both theaters, auditoriums and rooms as well as streets and squares where formations from inside and outside the Region of Murcia will perform to bring the public a wide range of proposals close to jazz, blues, rhythm and blues and other related genres and styles.

The event gathers the witness of the Murcia International Jazz Festival, which held its last edition, the thirtieth, in 2010, and thus returns to provide the city of Murcia with its own festival dedicated to a musical genre that increasingly has more followers.

With a parade in charge of the Dixieland Train Jazz Band The Murcia Jazz Festival will begin on the weekend of February 29 and March 1. Starting at 12:00 noon, the Murcian ensemble made up of seven musicians and created in the purest New Orleans style will surprise passers-by with its adaptations of Dixieland jazz classics from the early 20th century.

Likewise, other outdoor activities have been scheduled such as a Swing Morning, with Dan Barrett Swing Party (March 15), and a Matinal de Blues Murciano, with Baboon Blues County, Santiago Campillo Trío and Oh, Brother! (March 22). Both activities will take place in the Plaza de la Universidad at 12:00.

Also outdoors, in the Plaza de los Apóstoles, a Murciano Jazz marathon will be held on Saturday, March 28, which, from 11:00 to 23:00, will end the Murcia Jazz Festival and in which they will participate the Big Band Cotijazz, the Big Band Groove In and other formations of the Region.

Concerts in theaters

A total of eight concerts are to be held within this first edition of the Murcia Jazz Festival in different venues in the municipality of Murcia. Four of them will bring together national and international jazz greats at the Teatro Circo Murcia (TCM): The first concert (March 6, 9pm) will bring together three great musicians on stage in our country: Javier Colina, Marc Miralta and Perico Sambeat, CMS TRIO, who will demonstrate that their recipe for jazz, Latin standards and music with popular roots is more alive than ever.

On March 12 (9pm) it will be the turn of the Clarence Bekker Band; the current training of the Dutch musician who went from being a dance music star in the 90s to playing in the streets of Barcelona where the North American producer Mark Johnson listened to him and invited him to participate in the project ‘Playing for Change’, which was led by stars like Bono, Keith Richards and Manu Chao. He has performed with them all over the world and they have videos of more than 100 million visits, as is the case of the mythical ‘Stand By Me’.

The Israeli jazz saxophonist, composer and arranger Eli Degibri will play at TCM on March 20 (9pm) along with his band; accompanied by three young and promising musicians with whom he maintains great complicity: the award-winning pianist Tom Oren, bassist Alon Near and drummer Eviatar Slivnik. Eli Degibri Quartet’s latest work is ‘Soul Station’, a well-deserved tribute to the great Hank Mobley. Currently, he is also artistic director of the prestigious Red Sea Jazz Festival, the most important jazz festival in Israel.

The last of the concerts scheduled at the Murcia Circus Theater will be the March 27 (9pm) and will be in charge of the Catherine Russell Quintet; formation led by one of the great international ladies of jazz-blues. Russell has become one of the most versatile and dynamic jazz performers, whether accompanied by a solo piano or a band. He often recalls Bessie Smith’s heyday, but he also performs with the ardor of the great singers from his main jazz lineage.

Tickets for the four concerts, which range between 10 and 18 euros, can be purchased at the theater box office and through its website (www.teatrocircomurcia.es). Also, a subscription is available for all performances with a 25% discount on the price of Zone A.

Another of the Murcian stages that opens its doors to the Murcia Jazz Festival is the Bernal Theater, which will host, on March 7 (9pm), the performance of Curro García Quintet. The group led by the Murcian drummer Curro García will present their first album, ‘Five cities and a bitter truth’; an album that is, in itself, a catharsis before a life experience full of drama told through four original compositions and some arrangements. The seats are for sale, for 6 and 8 euros, at the box office of the Bernal Theater and the www.teatrobernal.com.

The municipal auditoriums of Guadalupe and Beniaján will also host two concerts each day March 13 and 21 (9pm). At Guadalupe Auditorium, they will make the public dance Zoot Suiters, with its rhythms and sounds from the golden 1920s; while Patxi Valverde Quartet will present her repertoire in Beniaján, combining arrangements and own compositions with a good dose of swing and great improvisations. Both times, tickets can be purchased through www.enclavecultura.com.

Finally, the Jazzazza Jazz Club de Algezares will host the Felix Schneider Quartet on March 14 (10:30 p.m.); a formation born in 2014, while the German pianist resided in Valencia for a season, and resumed from November 2017, when Schneider returned to Spain to present his new compositions in a modern jazz style, where various atmospheres are experienced without forgetting tradition . The price of this concert is 16 euros at the table, 12 euros in advance standing and 14 euros at the box office.

The Murcia Jazz Festival will be complemented by two activities that go beyond the musical. A round table that, under the title ‘The jazz scene. Looking out from Murcia ’, it will take place on March 26 in Hall 2 of the Artillery Barracks (7:00 p.m.). And the screening, at the Rex Cinema (March 23, 9pm), of Harol Lloyd’s film ‘Why Worry?’, To which the Andrés Santos Station Band line-up will put live music.

All the programming can be found at events.murcia.es

Source: Murcia City Council

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