Adrian Mamo on the Malta Jazz Festival

We’re in real countdown mode at the Malta Jazz Festival.   7 days to go and our logistics teams are in overdrive.  Construction work on the stage starts next Monday.

We caught up with Adrian Mamo, Chairman of the Malta Council for Culture and the Arts, and asked him what the Jazz festival means to him.

Any country that respects cultural exchange boasts at least one Jazz festival of note. What makes the idea of a Malta Jazz Festival so alluring? It all boils down, I believe, to the striking likeness between the region we live in and Jazz itself as a genre. They both speak of a history based on human encounter and the sharing of cultural expressions from the four corners of the globe.

Through an ever-increasing interest in the genre, ranging from Morocco to Italy, from Cyprus to Turkey and France, the eclectic sounds of Jazz keep changing the Mediterranean cultural landscape. In staging the 2009 Malta Jazz Festival, the Malta Council for Culture and the Arts aims to place Malta once more as part of a prestigious world circuit of Jazz events.

True to its past renown as a hub for the exchange of musical experience, this year’s festival encourages an encounter between musicians of international fame, and gifted local Jazz artists.

The Jazz festival is back. Expectations are high, and rightly so, because the Malta Jazz Festival has been host to some of the most pleasurable acts on the world scene.

As American cornetist Bix Beiderbecke had quipped, however, “One of the things I like about Jazz, kid, is I don’t know what’s going to happen next. Do you?”

Enjoy the show.

“Any country that respects cultural exchange boasts at least one Jazz festival of note. What makes the idea of a Malta Jazz Festival so alluring? It all boils down, I believe, to the striking likeness between the region we live in and Jazz itself as a genre. They both speak of a history based on human encounter and the sharing of cultural expressions from the four corners of the globe.

Through an ever-increasing interest in the genre, ranging from Morocco to Italy, from Cyprus to Turkey and France, the eclectic sounds of Jazz keep changing the Mediterranean cultural landscape. In staging the 2009 Malta Jazz Festival, the Malta Council for Culture and the Arts aims to place Malta once more as part of a prestigious world circuit of Jazz events.

True to its past renown as a hub for the exchange of musical experience, this year’s festival encourages an encounter between musicians of international fame, and gifted local Jazz artists.

The Jazz festival is back. Expectations are high, and rightly so, because the Malta Jazz Festival has been host to some of the most pleasurable acts on the world scene.

As American cornetist Bix Beiderbecke had quipped, however, ‘One of the things I like about Jazz, kid, is I don’t know what’s going to happen next.  Do you?’

Enjoy the show”.

The Malta Jazz festival kicks off next Thursday 16th July at 20.00hrs with Brad Mehldau.

Be there.