Accordions, trumpets and double basses will come together among the mountains of Andorra to give rise to the 40th edition of the Escaldes-Engordany jazz festival, an event that this year could be labeled as cinema, since it has the presence of Kyle Eastwood , son of the famous film director and responsible for some of the soundtracks that have accompanied the Californian’s films, such as Mystic River, Gran Torino or Letters from Iwo Jima.
A veteran double bassist with nine albums to his credit, Eastwood will share the bill with musicians such as Richard Galliano, Andrea Motis and Toquinho in a festival that will be held from July 4 to 11 with the Prat del Roure auditorium in Escaldes-Engordany as the nerve center. With tickets at 20 euros and a subscription of 50, the festival wants to promote jazz in the small country, for which one more year it will include free concerts in spaces such as Plaza Coprínceps or the streets of the Andorran municipality. “The desire is to bring culture closer to the whole world,” said the Major Councilor, Rosa Gili, at the presentation this Wednesday in Barcelona of a festival “with an international vocation.”
Richard Galliano’s accordion will star on July 4 in the first evening of the festival with the New York Tango Trio, along with Adrien Moignard on guitar and Diego Imbert on double bass, with whom he recovers tango music created from New York. Known for his collaborations with Astor Piazzola, the Cannes musician is considered the main reference for the accordion in jazz, at the level of Miles Davis on Trumpet, Ron Carter on bass or Charlie Parker on sax. Throughout his career he has collaborated with jazz leaders such as Chet Baker, Wynton Marsalis or Michel Petrucciani in addition to accompanying French voices such as Charles Aznavour or Juliette Gréco, without forgetting his classic interpretations of Bach, Vivaldi or Mozart.
On Friday the 5th, the inaugural concert will be held by Kyle Eastwood, who will perform the soundtracks of the films directed by Clint Eastwood, a great jazz fan who inoculated his son with the poison since he was little. The 55-year-old Californian musician, who has lived in France for years, will perform in a quintet accompanied by Quentin Collins on trumpet, Brandon Allen on sax, Andrew McCormack on piano and Chris Higginbottom on drums.
Younger but equally veteran is Barcelona-born Andrea Motis, who will visit Andorra again after being the most acclaimed artist in the previous edition. This time she will present her latest project, Temblor, which goes off the usual path to review the tradition of Anglo-Saxon singer-songwriters fusing them with Latin American and Brazilian sounds. For this, the singer and trumpeter will have the accompaniment of Christoph Mallinger on violin, mandolin and voice, as well as Zé Luis Nascimento on percussion. An experience that the artist herself has defined as “intimate” with themes that revolve around family, love or the change of stage.
The last of the concerts in the Prat del Roure auditorium will be performed by Toquiño, who on his first visit to the Principality will be accompanied by his partner, Camilla Faustino, while Dudu Penz will be in charge of bass and Mauro Martins will be in charge of drums. A “concentrated and stripped-down” quartet, as Joan Anton Cararach, artistic director of the festival, has defined it, who has also highlighted the repertoire that Antonio Pecci usually plays in his most recent performances, bossa nova classics to which he adds versions of Catalan artists like Joan Manuel Serrat.
As was done in the previous edition, the concerts will be followed by jam sessions open to the entire public that will be held in the lobby of the same auditorium with the presence of the Kic Barroc quartet accompanied each night by a different soloist, including the saxophone Irene Reig and trombonist Alba Pujals. The two concerts of the Més Jazz cycle will also be free, with Susana Sheiman paying tribute to Columbia’s catalog of white voices on July 10 and, the next day, the revisiting of Cravo e Canela, the album that the Catalan Carme Canela recorded in 1999 accompanied by the Orquestra Nacional d’Andorra, Gerard Claret and Lluís Vidal.
The musical offer of this jazz week will end with performances in the streets of Escaldes-Engordany, with artists such as Comrade Ventura, Èlia Lucas and Kike Pérez Quintet or Jamais Deux Sans Trois, in addition to the parade that Llibert Fortuny will star on July 5 together with The Cromatic XXS Beat Band with a tour of Carlemany Avenue to materialize the will to bring jazz to the mountains of the Pyrenees.