With spring just around the corner, the city is slowly emerging from its long hibernation. The vibrant strains of jazz could help to speed up this process, as the traditional Usadba Jazz festival has grown to present a new winter festival: Usadba Jazz Zima.
Usadba Jazz started as an attempt to take jazz music “out of basements and into the fresh air,” Maria Syomushkina, the festival’s founder and director, told The St. Petersburg Times.
The St. Petersburg Times
Usually taking place outdoors in the summer, Usadba jazz has now added an indoor winter festival to its annual schedule. Usadba Jazz Zima will be inviting an exciting selection of local and international musicians who are representative of the wide variety of styles that the label ‘jazz’ now encompasses. Ukrainian soul-funk singer Jamala will keep the crowd moving with her blend of classical and funk rhythms that have her helped become one of Ukraine’s most respected pop stars. Saxophonist Pee Wee Ellis and trombonist Fred Wesley (the so-called ‘fathers of funk’) will show why they are still some of the most loved funk musicians in the world and Moscow’s Nikolai Moiseenko Project promise some smooth jazz credentials accompanied by the velvety voice of Ksenia Kolambatskoy. St. Petersburg will be represented on the line-up by Fun2Mass and their instrumental funk and r’n’b sound.
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Usadba Jazz
