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| Look, It Is Even Moving! (Some notes of Master-Jam Fest that started in 2013) by Mikhail Mitropolsky Translated into English by A. Kuznetsova  Once Einstein was asked about the process of making a discovery."It is really simple. Everybody knows that it is impossible to make a discovery. There is always an ignorant man who does not know it. He is the one to make a discovery, " replied the scientist. The Odessa jazz Master-Jam Fest is quite unusual. It has а weird format and it goes beyond the limits. Since the project was born it has been impressing people globally and has become international in reality. The final part of the festival took place in the beginning of June and had such success nobody seemed to be expecting. The experiment made by the project author and producer Mikhail Freidlin and his team looked unreal from the very beginning. Even the author himself thinking over the project for more 10 years was skeptical about the reality of the idea embodiment. Being a big fan of jazz and jam session format he dreamed of creating the global jam that could be a certain ground for a musical contest. The main idea of this experiment is that the participants placed in rather extraordinary contest conditions have to unite their thoughts and feelings with little known partners and create a piece of art in a very short time. This process is a bit framed by stylistic boundaries and a time limit for public performance of the musical pieces. The first test flight has been accomplished. I have not seen such extraordinary joy and have not experienced such feeling of unity with the people surrounding me for a long time. That feeling was in the air on the festival days not only in the auditorium but also out in the streets near the Russian Academic Theatre, follow-up stories, photographs and internet postings shared with friends, that united the public and the musicians. That was exactly what the concert managers tend to strive for and that has not happened for a long time during such festivals. This unity does not come about due to different reasons and I would like to note down the two of them. Those who follow global jazz tendencies do not quite believe that here, at home (in Russia or Ukraine), they can eyewitness jazz concerts of the world level, especially with participation of the local musicians. Internet sources, recordings, and personal experience of those attending the festivals abroad are a solid ground for such disbelief. As for more groundling wider audience there is enough show supply for the demand. This statement is true for standard festivals and, especially, for the series of show programs 'About Jazz' on one of the Russian channels that claims to reflect 'cultural processes'. I think that most of these actions are a far cry from the true jazz. That snobbish attitude was totally demolished in Odessa. The effect of that festival-contest turned out to be quite unexpected. Creative efficiency of the participants grew up to the level that rarely eventuates at the standard festivals. The Master-Jam mechanism managed to create an artistic environment in which many musicians opened up in an unexpected way. The most important thing in the festival was not the TV picture, rating or embodiment of TV producers' illiteracy, but just music. The music was not only born right there but also revealed hidden abilities of the ensembles made up by the lottery. The music also revealed a number of striking musical heroes that were talked about, are being talked about and will be talked about for a long time. The music made the audience stand up in unanimous delight together with the visibly calm but also emotional jury. Let us talk about these concepts in detail. The idea of the festival-contest conceived 10 years ago did not fit the framework concept of a standard festival. A standard festival is a showcase event, a face of contemporary (or not contemporary, depending on preferences of organizers) jazz. It is a parade of ensembles from different countries that is held simultaneously on several venues within several days (sometimes within quite a number of days), building up the festival infrastructure including hotels, meals, festival merchandise, and etc. It is compulsory to have one or two headliners who attract the audience. Thus, on one hand, it is a big jazz shop window where a "jazz product" is displayed. A ready-made jazz 'product' was not present in the Master Jam Fest concept. That 'product' was supposed to be made during the festival days. What if the 'product' failed to be made? It was quite a risky enterprise. On the other hand, it is a contest in which the musicians have to be assessed by a certain jury. Jazz is a system of permanently generating, sparkling personalities. The participants are not sportsmen and women competing in a number of goals hit or record seconds and meters made. They are not academic musicians or dancers who can be assessed according to the academic school criteria. A jazz musician has the right to ignore the 'school' (there are examples among the well-recognized jazz coryphées). How can you assess such musicians and weigh? How can you attract the audience to see all this, as the audience wants to see a good show for their money at the end of the day? … All these issues did not bother a well-known theoretician in economics, a jazz fan and a long-term producer of the Odessa Jazz Carnival, a Moscow Odessite Mikhail Freidlin. They did not bother him to the point that having obtained a patent for the idea and a supposed working mechanism of his dream, having put together a small team of assistants and having obtained some formal support of some jazz authorities (formal as these people did not quite believe in success of that enterprise), he pushed the start button on that mechanism in 2012. The online Internet round lasted for almost a year with an aim of shortlisting the best musicians so that they could come to Odessa for the final live session. There were more than two hundred and seventy audiovisual applications from the musicians of 41 countries. The special expert committee and the public listened to the recordings and watched the videos. Every step and stage of the MJF was reported to the Internet community in detail so it was almost impossible to stay away from the process. Such things as changing ratings of the participants, events inside the festival process that was 9 months long, accompanying events (concerts, jubilees, exhibitions) created certain tension culmination of which was supposed to take place in Odessa in the beginning of June. By that time the ‘festival village’, off the contest concerts, workshops and exhibitions had been ready for the participating musicians and the jury members coming from different countries geography of which ranged from Cuba to Indonesia, in total there were 16 countries. On the very first day, to be more exact, in the very first evening, the Master-Jam Fest mechanism defined by Mikhail Freidlin as a «know-how» was started. Five representatives of eight main instruments and one exotic, additional instrument (in that case they were a flute, a darbuka and a harp (harmonica)) had to form five ensembles according to the lottery results, meet the next day in the practice session hall, get acquainted and rehearse their programs made out of three themes (two of different jazz stylistics and one original composition) to perform them the same evening in the concert hall. Each program had to be only 30 minutes long during the concert. To accomplish all above — mentioned the participants had only about one and a half hours of a practice time in the morning. On top of that the participants had to rehearse the joint big band program for the final Gala concert. After the evening concert the participants would have a new lottery and a new cycle began. There were three contest days of the festival and the three cycles as described above. The forth day was not easier. It consisted of a rehearsal and a joint big band program in the first part of the Gala concert, where the jury members seemed to enter the contest too, the contest of conductors. Anatoly Kroll from Moscow (Russia), Nicolay Goloshchapov from Odessa (Ukraine) and Andrew Machnev from Rostov-na-Donu (Russia) presented their programs with a joint big band made out of the festival participants. The second part of the gala concert consisted of the performance of the laureate ensemble. The laureate participants had only 15-20 minutes of the intermission to agree about the compositions they were going to play right away. I think that after all those challenges these 43 musicians could further succeed in their career, for example, as members of an astronaut team. I am not going to describe the way the musicians performed or the heroes of each day as there is a lot of written material about it and videos of all concerts can be watched in the Internet (by the way, online video broadcast also took place). I just want to make some notes. The first impression of the first night was the following: a bit skeptical jury was pleasantly surprised seeing almost a full house. There was not a single ‘jazz star’ headliner on the MJF posters; how come there were so many people? That ‘almost’ disappeared completely the following days. The word of mouth marketing had worked well; the auditorium was getting full, extra tickets were asked for in the neighboring streets on the final day. One more shocking thing was a surprisingly high standard of performance. Of course, it is understandable that the musicians differed in their experience, talent, a sense of form and style, instrumentalism, musicality and artistic taste. However, there were no poor musicians who were not ready for such a challenge. It was interesting to observe how the level of performance of some musicians was changing as they were adapting to the new musical conditions. That is write your comments about the article :: © 2013 Jazz News :: home page |