5 – 7 November 2009 | The 5th Vip Zagreb Jazz Festival, which opens November 5, will feature renowned jazz musicians names such as Sonny Rollins, Branford Marsalis and Terence Blanchard.
Sax player Sonny Rollins will open the festival with the performance at the Vatroslav Lisinski concert hall on November 5.
Over the next two nights, sax player and composer Branford Marsalis and trumpeter, composer and arranger Terence Blanchard will perform at the Student Centre Cinema.
Sonny Rollins is an American jazz tenor saxophonist. Widely recognized as one of the most important and influential jazz musicians of the post-bebop era, Rollins' long, prolific career began at the age of 11, and he was playing with piano legend Thelonious Monk before reaching the age of 20. A number of his compositions, including "St. Thomas", "Oleo" and "Airegin", have become jazz standards. As of 2009, Rollins is still touring and recording, having outlived most of his contemporaries such as John Coltrane, Miles Davis, Max Roach, and Art Blakey, all performers with whom he recorded.
Branford Marsalis is an American saxophonist, composer and bandleader. While primarily known for his work in jazz as the leader of the Branford Marsalis Quartet, he also performs frequently as a soloist with classical ensembles and has led the group Buckshot LeFonque.
Terence Blanchard is a jazz trumpeter, bandleader, composer, arranger, and Golden Globe-nominated film score composer. Since he emerged on the scene in 1980 with the Lionel Hampton Orchestra and then shortly thereafter with Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers, Blanchard has been a leading artist in jazz. He was an integral figure in the 1980s jazz resurgence having recorded several award-winning albums and having performed with the jazz elite. He is known as a straight-ahead artist in the hard bop tradition but has recently utilized an African-fusion style of playing that makes him unique from other trumpeters on the performance circuit. However, it is as a film composer that Blanchard reaches his widest audience. His trumpet can be heard on nearly fifty film scores; more than forty bear his unmistakable compositional style. Since 2000, Blanchard has served as Artistic Director at the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz.
The Vip Zagreb Jazz Festival premiered in 2005 and since then has been bringing the jazz greats to the Zagreb audience, including the Ron Carter Foursight, the Jack Dejohnette Quartet, the Archie Shepp Quartet, Chick Corea, the Joshua Redman Trio, the Kurt Elling Quartet, and the Brad Mehldau Trio.
www.vipzagrebjazzfestival.com