There is no festival without artists, nor concerts without rooms to perform. Following these simple principles is how the Mas i Mas festival has decided to abandon the month of August, a usual date during its two decades of history, to spread itself over a 6-month season with a proposal described as “the most powerful in history.” by Joan Mas, alma mater of the event. Spread between May and October of next year, the event that has shelved the name of festival proposes 25 concerts (some more will fall) with the Jamboree hall in Plaza Reial as the nerve center and visits to Paral·lel 62, the Apolo and La Pigeon.
Names like Bill Evans, Kurt Rosenwinkel, Cécile McLorin Salvant, Ethan Iverson and Gorka are part of a lineup that, unlike previous years, has left aside the techno, hip hop and flamenco programming in the venues that make up the Jamboree universe. to focus on the most prominent names within the jazz tradition, which explains why the number of concerts has gone from more than 150 in 2023 to the current twenty.
“In August it is difficult to coincide with the tours of the great artists,” says Joan Mas to justify this change of dates. An impediment that adds to the difficulty of finding large capacity venues in summer, a time when these venues are reserved for shows intended for tourism. All of this added to the musical saturation of both the Jamboree and Jamboree 3 and the Los Tarantos hall, which this year will program around 1,100 concerts with more than 3,800 artists. “This growth is the basis of Mas i Mas” comments the event programmer, Josep Mestres.
“We want Mas i Mas to allow us to leave the venues and do concerts with a higher budget,” he comments to justify a new policy that, in addition to sponsorships, includes price increases “to achieve more quality” and do concerts in small venues. , “we avoid large capacity, and that has a price.” In practice, tickets range from 20 euros to Molt Dope or The Staples Jr. Singers at 70 from Bill Evans' inaugural concert.
Regarding the change of dates, Mestres highlighted that the majority of Mas i Mas concerts will be held in the months of May, June and July, “a period that no one covered until now, we try not to overlap with other major festivals,” in reference to the jazz festivals of Terrassa and Barcelona. It is also a period in which "tours were not well leveraged in Barcelona", so they would be missing many performances that from now on will have a new window that will offer blues, soul, jazz hip hop and Brazilian music , “the DNA of Jamboree”.
Sax player Bill Evans, no relation to the brilliant pianist, will be in charge of inaugurating this new stage of Mas i Mas with a double performance at the Jamboree before a hundred people, a true declaration of intentions compared to the inauguration last year in a Palau de la Música that this year does not appear on the billboard. The musician from Illinois was part of Miles Davis' electric group, with which he recorded two albums after recruiting him when he was 21 years old. Later he played alongside John Mclaughlin, Herbie Hancock and Ron Carter. With 26 solo albums, the Illinois musician will perform alongside keyboardist John Medeski, Felix Pastorius on bass and Keith Carlock on drums, an unprecedented lineup with influences ranging from soul to jazz, including funk and pop.
James Carter, Evans' classmate and instrument, is another of the figures who will visit Mas i Mas to show his deep knowledge of the jazz tradition reflected in the tributes to Billie Holiday, Django Reinhardt and John Coltrane. The one from Detroit will perform alongside the Organ Trio, with Alex White on drums and Gerard Gibbs at the controls of the Hammond. Another renowned sax player comes from San Luis, Chris Cheek, who will perform in a quintet formation with Jordi Rossy, Steve Cardenas and the Catalans David Soler and Jaume Llombart, reflecting a Barcelona connection that led him to release his first album in 1997. “I wish i knew”, under the Fresh Sound Records label.
In that first job, Cheek featured Kurt Rosenwinkel on guitar, another of the luxury guests at Mas i Mas, with a career that has led him to play alongside Brad Mehldau and Joshua Redman years after stepping on the Jamboree for the first time. from the hands of the Rossy brothers when it was just a promise. The list of instrumentalists includes David Hazeltine, Eddie Henderson, or Gorka Benítez, a native of Bilbao living in Barcelona who will present the Spaces project. For his part, pianist Ethan Iverson, another acquaintance of Plaza Reial, will perform alongside Jordi Rossy, Bill McHenry and Masa Kamaguchi, in a performance from which a new album will be released.
The voice will be another of the leading instruments in Mas i Mas with three big names in the running. On the one hand, José James, halfway between jazz and hip hop, will present his latest work, 1978, a tribute to the music of the 70s turned into an anti-racist plea. Cécile McLorin Salvant, a vocalist from Miami who combines blues and jazz with folk music, German cabaret and Renaissance singing, moves along the same eclectic line, a proposal that has earned her three Grammy Awards with her songs where she uses French, Occitan and Haitian Creole. The vocal proposal is completed with the French-Dominican Cyrille Aimée, based in Brooklyn, who will present her new work, A Fleur de Peau, where she is inspired by the Dominican heritage of her mother, mixing African dances, Iberian folklore and contemporary pop.
Another novelty of this edition of the “non-festival” is the celebration of an Emmet Place, one of the well-known jazz concerts that Emmet Cohen broadcasts from New York in the wake of the Tiny Desk Concert and that will be held for the first time in Europe with the participation of the Barcelonans Irene Reig, Santi de la Rubia and Oriol Vallés. The double bassist Endea Owens has already appeared on the American public radio program, one of the most promising artists who will perform in a sextet format. Saxophone Sara Hanahan is another of the talents who will visit Barcelona, accompanied by Joe Farnsworth. Like the New Yorker Solomon Hicks, who with his guitar has shared the stage with artists such as Buddy Guy, Tony Bennett, Ringo Starr and Jimmie Vaughn.
The proposal is completed with varied offers such as Michel David
