The third music festival “Hotel de Ville” with Olga Skepner has ended in Kazan

The director of the festival shared plans for the fourth season.

(KZN.RU, June 8). On June 7, the closing of the third music festival “Hotel de Ville” with Olga Skepner took place in the Kazan City Hall. The French jazz project “Old and New Songs” was first performed in the capital of Tatarstan. The concert, organized with the support of the Kazan City Hall, the Embassy of France in Russia, and the Alliance Francaise-Kazan, was a great success.

Dina Latfullina, the head of the Kazan City Hall, opened the concert and said that the evening is devoted to French jazz. “France is a country with a rich cultural heritage. It gave the world wonderful architecture, fine arts, cinematography, fine cuisine, fashion, perfume, and music that are known all over the world”, she said and recalled that the title of the festival is “Hotel de Ville” is French for “City Hall”.

The musicians presented a program of authentic songs from different countries in an unusual jazz composition. “We were inspired by folk motifs and classical music”, said Joann Lustalo, the band's leader, trumpeter. “We hope that we will be able to surprise the Kazan audience”. Francois Shasnel, the band's pianist, continued the idea: “All the songs that we took as a basis are strong and powerful. They sound more than for one generation. We tried to show them in our own way”.

The audience noted the unusually high level of skill of the musicians, as well as the complexity and bizarre arrangements, sometimes sounded as the traditional jazz, and sometimes reminded the works of contemporary avant-garde composers, noted the organizers.

Olga Skepner, the music director of the festival, introduced the team and told that the festival “Hotel de Ville” passed the stage of formation and will continue to develop. She noted that various formats of the festival were tested: trio, pianist's duet with the actor, a large team of 11 people on the stage (that was with Mariam Merabova). As a result, there was a certain positioning of the festival: it's a festival in the concert hall. “Such a combination of beauty and love in a surprisingly beautiful place, with beautiful music, with a beautiful audience! I hope that the festival will live and develop further. There are already dreams and plans for the fourth season. Now I have a feeling of the main thing: jazz has found its home in Kazan! This is an amazing hall of the Kazan City Hall”, said Olga Skepner.

The jazz festival is held since 2015 in the hall of the former Nobility Assembly (now in the Kazan City Hall). Concerts of such stars of the Russian and world stage as Yves Cornelius (USA), Sofia Rubina-Hunter (USA), Mariam Merabova and the trio of Armen Merabov, Sergey Manukyan, Evgeny Borets, and Daniil Spivakovsky (Russia) took place in the most refined concert hall of the city. The concept of the project is to recreate the traditions of the music salon, to return to history. Once there were outstanding artists in the hall of the Nobility Assembly (Sergei Rachmaninov, Fedor Chaliapin, and Leonid Sobinov). In the 1950s, the famous jazz orchestra of Oleg Lundstrem played at the dance house in the then House of Officers.

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