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| Blues Festival Changes Name, Ditches Big Cities In 24Th Edition Turkey's annual traveling celebration of the blues, the Efes Pilsen Blues Festival, will launch its 24th edition on Nov. 1 after officially changing its name to the Blues Festival and removing the three major cities from its itinerary. Formerly sponsored by the Efes Pilsen brewery, Turkey's longest-running blues festival will be solely organized by the Istanbul-based event management company Pozitif Live starting from this year. The name change is due to a new law enacted in 2013 that bans companies producing alcoholic beverages from sponsoring events such as concerts and festivals using their brands and logos. The festival's itinerary also underwent considerable changes for the 24th edition, which will not include stops in any of the three major Turkish provinces. Istanbul, Ankara and Izmir previously used to host each edition of the festival at least two nights in a row but this year's program, announced last week in a press release by Pozitif Live, did not have any of the three locations on its 17-concert bill. The festival is set to begin on Nov. 1 in the Aegean province of Denizli and end on Nov. 26 in the Thracian province of Edirne. Contemporary US blues singer-guitarist and songwriter Jimmy Burns and his four-piece band, blues-gospel and jazz vocalist Katherine Davis and multiple award-winning Joe Louis Walker, one of the most important musicians in the present-day blues scene, are set to take to the stage in 17 concerts throughout the festival, which will travel to Antalya, Kayseri, Adana, Bursa, Eskisehir, Çanakkale and Gaziantep as well as the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (KKTC), among other cities in Turkey. Up until 2013, the festival has featured 379 live performances by a total of 90 bands and 278 musicians, entertaining 450, 700 blues lovers. write your comments about the article :: © 2013 Jazz News :: home page |