Those two major festivals as the summer season's opener and closer mean than there's something in between. There is, though not necessarily within the city limits. In July, there's two jazz (or jazz- sympathetic) festivals in the Moscow region, both in so-called "science towns."

Pushchino Jazz Days
Puschino, Russia

A science town is, basically, a residential area around a campus that holds a bunch of scientific laboratories, institutes, and the like—a phenomena wide-spread during the Soviet era when all the science in the country, both fundamental and applied, was owned and supported solely by the government. Pushchino, a science town 70 miles south of Moscow, is built around the country's biggest complex of biology research facilities. The Pushchino jazz enthusiasts run a jazz festival back in the 1970s and 1980s, known for the largest Russian Dixieland parade across town. With the decline and fall of the Soviet Union, which caused a long and painful crisis in the science funding and, therefore, a crisis in the lives of "science towns," the tradition broke for the long fifteen years. However, in mid-2000s, a group of local enthusiasts raised some resources to start the Puschino Jazz Days again. It is still on a very modest level, most of the concerts during the festival's two-day run being indoors; but the Pushchino Dixieland Parade, once famous Jazz Days' opener, is back (below)—though now it's limited to just one trad jazz band marching across town. Nonetheless, the public really loves it.

MuzEnergo Jazz Festival
Dubna, Russia

A Dixieland parade, on a similarly modest level, also marks the start of another science town festival, only it's in the opposite direction, about 80 miles north of Moscow, in Dubna. On the shores of Volga, Russia's (and entire Europe's) biggest river, here in its upper portion, the 65-thousand-big Dubna is the seat of the Moscow State University Nuclear Physics Institute and the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research, one of the most significant international nuclear research facilities. The periodic table's 105th chemical element is Dubnium, named so because it was discovered in Dubna in 1968. The city's reasonably high educational rate means that there is a lot of audience ready for complex music forms, jazz included. This is pretty much the formula for MuzEnergo, Dubna's thrice-a-year festival, which offers prog rock, jazz rock fusion, ethno fusion, and jazz.

MuzEnergo's summer edition (below) is being held outdoors, on a nice pinewood clearing on the taller right bank of Volga River, just a few blocks away from the city's quiet downtown. This year, on July 18, the MuzEnergo lineup consisted mostly of Russian bands of a very diverse stylistic range.

Two bands represented the Eastern part of Russia: the Funky House Band from the city of Ufa is a strong funk fusion unit, with dynamic electric bass foundation provided by its leader, Oleg Yangurov, who polished his abilities during his many years of work in the jazz clubs in Bangkok, Thailand, and Tokyo, Japan. From the city of Yekaterinburg, a younger group, the Free Spoken Band, offered a tricky, though slightly under- rehearsed, prog rock program. But the jazziest act came from Kiev, Ukraine—a group led by prodigious trumpet player Dennis Adu (below), who was born in Ghana and raised in Ukraine.

The festival program was closed by Zventa Sventana, an ambitious band from Moscow; they try to marry Russian ethno folklore singing and jazz funk fusion—and not without success, though their lead singer, Tina Kuznetsova (pictured below with Sventana), is still more a jazz singer (which is her education and years of experience) than a keeper of centuries-old ethnic traditions to which she is apparently new. It is obvious though, that under the guidance of the second singer, Alyona Romanova, who holds a degree in ethnomusicology, Tina is gradually mastering the ancient art of folklore singing which, during the decades of Soviet-era oppressions towards "reactionary past," almost became extinct.

NuNote Lounge Festival
Moscow, Russia

MuzEnergo is not the only "jazz-friendly" multi-stylistic open-air jazz festival in and around Moscow. There is also NuNote Lounge Festival in downtown Moscow (early August), which was this year headlined by the Afrobeat patriarch, Tony Allen, the rest of the line-up producing various electronic sounds, sometimes with a jazzy flavor. There's also Metafest, a blues/funk/rock-improv open-air event well outside of Moscow, which also has a smaller Moscow edition in late August. This coming weekend is also marked by an outdoors festival with mixed jazz/blues roster, the Runway Festival, which opens the program of the week-long AviaMax Aviation Show on the Zhukovsky airfield, 25 miles southeast of Moscow.

comments powered by Disqus