The Kavkaz Jazz Festival

The Kavkaz Jazz Festival, celebrated for the 9th year in a row, is held on 7-8th June in Tbilisi. The purpose of the Festival is to aid Jazz development, enhance the cultural dialogue of performers and friendly collaboration in South Caucasus, towards further cooperation.

This year, Jazz Café Singer will host the gathering of Caucasian Jazz lovers. The final event will be held in Abanotubani, where artists from Azerbaijan, Turkey, Georgia and Armenia will gather together on stage and perform in front of an audience.

The festival is hosting the unique project Kavkaz Jazz Quartet, created over the last year with the participation of well-known musicians of the region, including:

Salman Gambarov (Azerbaijan) – pianist, composer and arranger. Participated in well-known festivals such as Montreux Jazz Festival, Oriental Jazz Fest, Zelt-Musik-Festival and Beethoven Festival.

Armen Hyusnunts (Armenia) – saxophonist, composer, conductor and a deserved artist of Armenia. He founded the Group Time Report. For years, he has been Arto Tunjboiajan's legendary Armenian Navy Band soloist. In 2004-2006, he was invited as a professor at the Yerevan State Conservatoire.

George Mel (Giorgi Meliqishvili, Georgia, USA) – drummer, percussionist, composer, arranger. New York City Jazz Record referred to him as a “Veteran of New York Jazz and the World Music Scene”. George successfully graduated from the prestigious Berklee College of Music in the US. He has been a part of many outstanding artists’ projects, a leader/composer for various author’s projects and authored an arrangement himself.

Senturk Oztas (Turkey) – a young and talented bass player, who is best known for his bass-vocal duo project Songs From A Breeze. He is also a member of the ISTBILISI project (Turkey), which is a brand new musical get-together, especially created for the Kavkaz Jazz Festival. With Bilal Karaman on guitar, and Mustafa Olgan on electric they play compositions and traditional Turkish songs and even well-known jazz tunes with a traditional approach.

This unique regional quartet will perform with Georgian Ethno-jazz band IRIAO, Nargile Mehtiyeva and Ivane Mkrtchyan on duduk from Tbilisi.

Since 2010, The Kavkaz Jazz Festival has hosted more than 100 musicians from 11 different countries.

The event is organized by Art Bridge, presented by the Ministry of Culture and Monument Protection of Georgia, and supported by the Tbilisi City Hall.

Partners include: Georgian National Tourism Administration and Yunus Emre Institute, Embassy of Turkey, Embassy of Armenia, Media Holding GBTIMES Georgia, Radio IMEDI and OK Magazine.