The “Jazz au Chellah” festival, organised in Rabat by the European Commission, among the storks of the Chellah necropolis, manages to join, thanks to its characteristic fusion aspect, jazz by artists coming from all over Europe together with Moroccan artists.
“Every night holds surprises and something special is created: it’s the encounter moment”, says Majid Bekas, Artistic Director for Morocco.
The festival is not only a meeting between North and South Mediterranean, it also reflects Europe’s plurality: this year, from June 13 to 17, meeting the Moroccan musicians will be the Greek band Kostas Theodorou, who play a jazz tinted with Mediterranean and Balkan tones; the Pascal Schumacher quartet, winner of a golden Django last year; Belgian group Slang, who present themselves as “too rock for jazz and too jazzy for rock”; Giulia Valle’s Spanish quartet, a famed double bass player hailing from the Catalonian Jazz scene, and the Andy Sheppard duo with Jean Marie Machado on piano.
Also present, opening each night are the European Jazz Ensemble, a formation with members from Germany, Poland, Czech Republic, Romania and the UK, the Italian Francesco Bearzatti Tinissima quartet, Finnish band Alexi Tuomarila trio, Das Kapital, from Germany, Denmark and France, and the Portuguese Luisa Sobral Quartet.
Organised every year since 1996 by the Moroccan delegation of the European Union, alongside the Moroccan Ministry of Culture and the Wilaya of Rabat- Salé-Zemmour-Zaërs, in collaboration with the embassies and cultural institutes of the member states of the European Union, “Jazz au Chellah” takes advantage of the freedom offered by jazz to anticipate the creation of a dialogue culture. (ANSAmed).
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