Category: Nišville Jazz Festival – eng

Winner of the Nišville Lifetime Achievement Award

Recognition of a Pioneer of Jazz and World Music Fusion in Serbia Dragomir Milenković Joga

Dragomir Milenković, an independent artist, guitarist, composer, journalist, and one of the pioneers of jazz and world music fusion, has been awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award by the Nišville Festival, which recognizes artists who have made a significant impact on the Serbian jazz scene. He will receive the award on the opening night of Nišville 2023, on Thursday, August 10th.

Dragomir Milenković was born in 1954 in the Dalmatian city of Trogir, Croatia. He lived in Prokuplje, and it was during his time in Niš that he gained broader recognition and drew attention to his work beyond the borders of Serbia.

In addition to his wide-ranging interests and experiences in music, over several decades he has devoted himself to jazz, working in the Berklee School of Music system from Boston, and then exploring the possibilities of applying world music in jazz art. In the early 1990s, he worked on the development of new Balkan music and Balkan jazz as a member of the bands Hazari (which he founded about thirty years ago in Niš, and whose first album was released by Nišville) and Misteria Karpatika, before continuing his cultural work on the theory and practice of jazz improvisation. He has presented his original compositions on 14 albums to date, performed at numerous festivals in Serbia and abroad, concerts, collaborated with the French Cultural Center, the Iranian Cultural Center, the Ministry of Culture of Serbia, Serbian cultural institutions, RTS, TV Al Jazeera, and the International Red Cross.

He is also involved in journalism. His music philosophical texts have been published in the Belgrade magazine „Pop kultura“, the magazine of the world music association of Serbia „Etnoumlje“, the magazine „Nur“ of the Iranian Cultural Center in Belgrade, the Belgrade magazine „Svetlica“…

He has collaborated with many artists (in a wide range of styles), including Oliver Dragojević, Zdenka Kovačićek, Kornelije Bata Kovač, Maja Odžaklijevska, Beti Đorđević, Bebi Dol, Boba Stefanović, Ljubiša Stojanović Luis, Nada Pavlović, Sanja Ilić, harpsichordist Smiljka Isaković, Usnija Redžepova, Vaska Ilijeva, Duo Želčevski, and the bands Frenki, Misteria Karpatika, and EYOT.

He is a member of the Association of Composers of Serbia, the organization SOKOJ, and since 2005, a member of the Coordination Committee of Artists of the City of Belgrade.

Dragomir Milenković Joga will perform with a new lineup of the band Hazari at the opening of this year’s festival, where he has performed several times before, and he is particularly remembered for the Hazari concert when Kornelije Bata Kovač performed as a special guest with them at Nišville 2010.

Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-DPpwWmTAQc Hazari and Kornelije Bata Kovač – Nišville 2010

Legendary Trip-Hop Pioneer Tricky Takes the Stage at Nišville in Serbia

Pioneer of trip-hop is coming to Serbia

Adrian Nicholas Matthews Thaws (1968), better known by his stage name Tricky, former member of the mega-popular group Massive Attack, will perform with his band at the closing of this year’s Nišville on Sunday, August 13th.
This British producer and rapper, and one of the pioneers of trip-hop music, was born and raised in Bristol, southwest England, and started his career as an early member of Massive Attack, which also included Robert Del Naja, Grant Marshall, and Andrew Vowles.
He began his solo career in 1995 with the extremely successful album, Maxinquaye, which marked the beginning of a long-term collaboration with vocalist Martina Topley-Bird. In a review of the album in Rolling Stone magazine, it was stated that „Tricky swallowed everything from American hip-hop and soul to reggae and melancholic British rock of the ’80s.“
By the end of the decade, he had released four more studio albums, and since 2000, he has released ten more, including „Fall to Pieces“ (2020) and „Lonely Guest“ (2021), which features guest appearances from Lee Scratch Perry and Oh Land.
Tricky has always employed female vocals to convey his ideas, so most of the songs on „Fall to Pieces“ rely on Polish singer Marta Zlakowska, whom he discovered when he was left without a vocalist at the start of a European tour. „She saved the tour from disaster. I can recognize when someone is humble and up to the task. Marta doesn’t care about fame – she just wants to sing,“ Tricky said of his new collaborator. In 2016, he briefly rejoined his first band, „Massive Attack.“
Throughout his career, he has collaborated with a wide range of artists, including Terry Hall (lead singer of the Specials), Bjork, American hip-hop group „Gravediggaz,“ Alanis Morissette, Grace Jones, PJ Harvey, and others.
He has also acted in several films, including a significant role in Luc Besson’s 1997 film „The Fifth Element,“ playing the „Right Hand“ of the villainous Zorg.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E3R_3h6zQEs Hell is around the corner
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=25y3cMC9i94 Aftermath
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yAEiIF5parQ Fall please

Roberto Fonseca – at the opening of Nisville 2023

La Gran Diversion in August in Nis

One of the most prominent Cuban jazz (and not only jazz!) musicians of the new millennium, pianist, composer, arranger, and singer with several Grammy nominations behind him – Roberto Fonseca, will present his new project „La Grand Diversion“ (The Great Fun) with his orchestra at the opening of Nisville on Thursday, August 10th.

This project that combines music, scenography, choreography, video projections in the background (…) is a kind of homage to the famous „Cabane Cubaine“ club, where the whole of Paris came in the thirties of the last century to listen to fantastic Cuban musicians and dance mambo, rumba, or salsa. Roberto Fonseca was born in 1975 and grew up in San Migel del Padron, a southeastern suburb of Havana. His father was a drummer and his mother was a famous Bolera singer. He began playing drums at the age of four, and as a child performed in a band that played Beatles songs. At the age of eight, he began playing the piano, and his first serious performance was as a fifteen-year-old at the Jazz Plaza festival in Havana. He graduated in composition from the prestigious Instituto Superior del Arte, and his piano style is characterized by exceptional and powerful temperament but also refinement that goes to lyricism. His musical taste has always been eclectic: he listened to (and successfully played) hard rock, American jazz (his first influences were Herbie Hancock, Keith Jarrett, Oscar Peterson), funk and soul, African and Brazilian music, reggae, electronic music, hip-hop, but also classics such as Mozart, Chopin, Beethoven, Rachmaninoff, Scriabin, Grieg, Bartok…

In short, his music is characterized by openness to all these styles but also a desire to remain true to his Afro-Cuban core. When he was 21, he was hired to play piano accompaniment for an Italian singer on tour in Italy. Upon returning to Cuba, he joined „Temperamento“, a progressive jazz group, with whom he collaborated for 15 years, performing and recording – among other things, the album „En El Comienzo“ (1998) – which was proclaimed the best jazz release in Cuba. His first album under his own name was released in 1999.

He composed music for a French film, and he came to the forefront of the music scene in 2001 when he sat in the piano chair of the legendary „Buena Vista Social Club“ instead of the already very ill Ruben Gonzales. He went on tour with two other Buena Vista legends: Ibrahim Ferrer and the vital Omar Portuondo, in whose band he was also artistic director. After co-producing and playing on Ferrer’s posthumously released album „Mi Sueno: A Bolero Songbook“ (2006), Fonseca released his (now legendary) solo album „Zamazu“, which returned to his jazz roots, whose bold vision included 20 guest collaborators and hinted at a brilliant future.

This was followed by the album „Akokan“ from 2009, on which the singer from the Cape Verde Islands Maja Andrade and the American guitarist Raul Midon joined his quartet. „Live in Marciac“ from 2010 was recorded in front of 5,000 fans in the eponymous festival city in southwestern France. „Taste makers“ recognized in Fonseca the potential of his lucid music…

Roberto Fonseca – La Gran Diversión LIVE

Roberto Fonseca (an Frankfurt big band) – Cuban Chant