The jubilee 40th Belgrade Jazz Festival will be officially opened on October 24 in the MTS Hall, starting at 7:00 p.m., with a concert by the Radio Television of Serbia Big Band and a special guest, the internationally renowned conductor, pianist, and arranger Alan Broadbent. The program “From Newport to Belgrade” is conceived as a celebration of the glorious history of the event in the spirit of this year’s name of the festival “Jazz Legacy”.
Big Band RTS, our oldest orchestra – which last year also celebrated its big jubilee, the 75th year of its existence – holds the record for the number of participations in the oldest Serbian jazz festival. This year will be their eighteenth performance, among which several were at the event’s opening. Their first participation was in 1975, in the same hall, the then House of Trade Unions, just as this year’s guest-conductor Alan Broadbent performed in the same place for the only time in Belgrade in 2010, with the “Charlie Haden Quartet West” band. The program is designed as a memory of several jazz greats who participated in the first editions of the event. We will hear original Broadbent arrangements of compositions by Miles Davis, Thelonious Monk, and Charlie Haden, as well as works inspired by Newport and the legacy of Dizzy Gillespie.