Aglantzia to fill with jazz once again this July

Smooth jazzy melodies, improv, intricate piano compositions and rhythmic vocals will return to Aglantzia this July as the 2021 edition of the popular AglanJazz festival returns on Wednesday 7 and Thursday 8 at Skali Cultural Centre. Six musical ensembles will take the stage to fill the neighbourhood with their jazzy sounds.

Eleonora Roussou will open the festival with a performance titled Joy. The compositions and songs to be presented are inspired by human emotions and all that go with them. Eleonora’s creative impetus is transparency, sharing and openness, so these compositions are a moving amalgamation of life lived so far. The band is conceptually comprised of musicians who belong to diverse music genres – classical, jazz, folk, Eastern Mediterranean, funk, Balkan and Latin music.

Following her performance will be another Cypriot ensemble – the Ioannis Vafeas Quartet. Since their formation in 2018, the musicians have appeared in festivals in Cyprus and abroad. Last year they recorded a new album titled Catharsis which received some fine reviews from the international press. Catharsis consists of mainly original compositions by Cypriot composers Michael Messios and Glafkos Kontemeniotis along with a few jazz standards re-arranged.

The evening will wrap with the Sokratis Votskos Quartet from Greece presenting their Sketching the Unknown set. After only a few years of artistic presence and an international release, this band is one of the new assets featuring prominently on the Greek music scene. Primarily centred around straight-ahead contemporary jazz and heavily influenced by Balkan music, the band approaches modal jazz in a more comprehensive manner.

Kickstarting the second evening’s performances is the Mendonis Big Band – a large jazz ensemble consisting of 15 musicians. The project was founded by Petros Mendonis who is also responsible for the arrangements and conducting. The idea behind the project is to have original compositions and to promote authenticity with new sounds. The music that will be presented at the festival is a combination of various rhythms used in jazz as well as rich harmonic content with storytelling melodies.

The second act on July 8 is a band from Hungary. The Kodály Spicy Jazz band was formed in 2017 in memory of the 50th anniversary of Hungarian composer Zoltán Kodály’s death. It aims to bring well-known Hungarian folk songs from choir and singing lessons to the – mainly young – audience in a new, creative, energetic fresh kind of way. The members of the band are professional musicians who participate in several bands and represent a wide spectrum of genres like blues, funk, rock, metal, reggae or pop music.

Closing the festival is the well yet fairly recently established Workin’ Trio. Playing together since 2020, the three Cypriot musicians create sounds inspired by uplifting swing grooves at times blended with Gospel, New Orleans, and Boogaloo rhythms. The combination of the Hammond organ, tenor saxophone, and drums creates a unique sound. The focus of the Trio is to unbury the less-known repertoire from the 40s, 50s and 60s as well as to compose original tunes along the same lines. With the addition of the second tenor, the band will also perform tunes made famous by the tradition of the tenor sax battles.

AglanJazz 2021

Two evenings with jazz performances by various ensembles. July 7-8. Skali Cultural Centre, Nicosia. 8.30pm. €5. Tickets via tickethour.com.cy