The courtyard of Brno’s Old Town Hall will host two special top-class jazz concerts today and tomorrow, as part of the JazzFest Brno festival, featuring both established veterans of the Czech jazz scene, and performing arts students playing under the guidance of their teachers. Admission to both events is free.
Today, from 3 pm, the Brno section of the 10th annual Jazz Courtyard will take place, initiated by the jazz departments of Prague’s HAMU and Brno’s JAMU. The HAMU rhythm ensemble will perform, led by Jiří Slavík, as well as other student bands led by personalities such as Jaromír Honzák, Luboš Soukup and Jiří Levíček.
Tomorrow, the first part of this year’s JazzFest Brno festival season will conclude with an open-air jazz party, entitled “JazzFestBrno under the open sky”. Starting from 5 pm, five leading Czech ensembles will take turns: Ondřej Štveráček Double Drums Quintet, E Converso, Cyrille Oswald & The Survivors, Géri & Jaštěři, and finally renowned trumpeter Lukáš Oravec and his big band to close the evening.
JazzFest Brno international music festival will continue in the autumn, featuring artists such as Al Di Meola and Kamasi Washington. Composer and multi-instrumentalist Jiří Slavík with the nine-member ensemble Polka-boys will present radical arrangements of polka as part of the Polkatime project, and the Club Life club series will continue in the Cabaret des Péchés, this time with singer José James and a double concert by the Robert Balzar Trio and Matej Benko Quintet. Tickets are already on sale at www.jazzfestbrno.cz, which also has more information about the whole programme and all the featured performers.
