It’s been 20 years since the Barcelona summer gave music a holiday, all thanks to the Mas i Mas Festival, which will plan 162 concerts between July 27 and September 2 in an edition that pays tribute to the 50th anniversary of the Zeleste hall .
With jazz as the main protagonist and the soundboard Jamboree room, the Mas i Mas will bring to Barcelona a mix of international figures and emerging talent that will start with a performance at the Palau de la Música by the Clasijazz Orchestra, who will perform Epitaph, by Charles Mingus, 30 years after the piece was performed on the same stage. A concert “that couldn’t be done without the festival”, as Josep Mestres, programmer of the event and the Jamboree hall, remembers.
The program will include performances such as the duet formed by the multi-instrumentalist Jordi Rossy and the pianist Michael Kanan, the flutist Angie Obin or the poet, saxophonist and singer Soweto Kinch, who will celebrate this year the performance that he was unable to carry out the previous one edition after a racist incident with the Ryanair airline, which was taking him to Barcelona, ??prevented him from performing at the Jamboree. This time, he will be sharing the stage with the Corto Alto septet, the revelation from Glasgow that is winning in the UK with a huge following among jazz students. Without forgetting the performance of Susana Baca, queen of Afro-Cuban music.
Along with these great names, there will be emerging talents such as saxophonist Tony Malaby, who will perform with pianist Álvaro Tomás. Also the pianist Iannis Obiols, nephew of Víctor Bocanegra, a last-minute addition with the first performance in a festival.
In room 3 of Jamboree, the authentic rhombus that hung over the curtains that gave access to Zeleste has been showing since this week. The memory of the place that marked an era from Carrer Plateria will dominate the entire festival, with performances such as the tribute to Gato Pérez with a concert that will mix current musicians such as Set de Rumba or Dani Txarnego with Quino Béjar, Gato’s percussionist. Despite the fact that perhaps the most emotional event will be the one that will close the festival itself in the Paral·lel 62 room, another of the Mas i Mas’s main spaces, with a tribute to the guitarist Jordi Bonell and Laietan music, in a program – ma doble with the performance of a band promoted by Víctor Cortina and that of the Barcelona Art Orchestra.
