The first edition of Sounds of Summer – Jam in the Park, a festival centred around musical improvisation, will happen in Bucharest’s Obor Park from August 18 to August 21.
According to a press release from the Metropolis Cultural Association distributed to AGERPRES on Monday, the four days of Sounds of Summer – Jam in the Park, an event devoted to musical improvisation, will feature live performances, jam sessions, interactive music workshops for all ages, creative workshops for kids, and a fair. Each day will have a different theme, including Oriental, African, Balkan, and Latin American.
Entry to the event is free, the release also informs.
The event aims to familiarize the Bucharest audience with the concept of a jam session, in which musicians who are not used to performing in the respective formula but in a relatively familiar context improvise a piece of music and build new melodic lines based only on the inspiration they have on the spot. Jam-session activities are used by musicians when they want to either compose a new piece of music or approach an existing song from a new perspective, and the activity is also used as a method of socializing with other enthusiasts of music.
Sounds of Summer press release
On the first day of the event, August 18, on an oriental day, the flautist and flute teacher with a rich activity on the Romanian stages, Mandela Gajol, will hold an interactive percussion and flute workshop, and a Karpov not Kasparov concert will take place on stage.
The African day on August 19 brings Ati de Chile, the percussionist who has collaborated on various projects, from Loredana Groza, VH-2, Vama Veche, Ioan Gyuri Pascu or Mandinga to N.S.K., Blanoz, Urma or Pacha-Man, with more than 20 discs recorded in Romania in different formats and more than 1,000 concerts performed in various countries and Lolo – Ikhaya Watumbe, a musician who was born in Togo, but moved to Romania in 2014, where he organizes and teaches at various creative workshops, holding both percussion workshops, but also jam sessions, together with Melak. On August 20, on Balkan day, percussionist Cosmo, trained in Balkan and oriental music and collaborator of some of the most important names on the Balkan scene (…), brings Turkish rhythms to his workshops. On August 21, the Latin American day, the percussionist, flamenco dance performer and teacher Lucas Molina is in charge of the workshop and then the jam session and concert, together with Taraf Flamenco.
The Metropolis Cultural Association further declares that Melak, one of the most well-known percussionists in Romania with more than 20 years of expertise in the field, will organize all seminars.