Skopje Jazz Festival, Round Three: Jazz!

The third evening of concerts at this years festival was the first evening to feature what the average punter thinks of as jazz - you know, drums/bass/piano trio, horn sections, “standards” - but the audience was pretty much the same as the first two nights. I mean that literally - because the Skopje Jazz Festival is as much a social as a musical event, you see the same faces on successive nights, just sitting in different seats.

The first set was the Jean-Michel Pilc Trio. I’d never heard of Pilc, a self-taught French pianist, but his trio featured Mark Mondesir, one of my favourite drummers. On that basis alone I assumed that the quality of the music was going to be high, and it absolutely was. Pilc is an ethereal force at the piano, light and vigorous at the same time, sometimes standing, sometimes sitting, sometimes playing directly with the piano strings, sometimes falling off one side of the keyboard. I was worrried that he might be too imposing for a trio setting, that he would dominate the music, but Mondesir and bass player Thomas Bramerie balanced him well. A mixture of Pilc’s own compositions and standards given his own twists and turns, I could have left happy after that without waiting for the second set of the evening.

I’m glad I did wait, however, because after the break we were treated to The Leaders, a superstar group put together by Chico Freeman. If you have any familiarity with jazz, you’ll recognise names like Bobby Watson, Lenny White and Eddie Henderson. The band were slightly off form because their luggage had been lost in transit, and so they were dressed in their travel clothes, but they still blew through the Universal Hall.

There were no revelations, just rock-solid playing; ironically the player who stood out for me was not one of the big names, but the young pianist Frederick Harris. He didn’t rock the keys in the way that Pilc did, but was equally impressive in terms of tone and fluency. The other players were exactly what I was expecting, but I was slightly surprised by how well they played together given how distinctive their individual voices are; the set had the feeling of an extended jam session rather than a formal concert. The frontline players chatted to each other between solos, and there was a real feeling that they really enjoyed playing together, a feeling that they shared with Pilc’s earlier trio.

And that was the end of my Skopje Jazz Festival. It actually went on for another two nights, but I had to get back to… well, I’m not sure what I had to get back to, but I left anyway. I was glad I’d made the effort (even though I had to dig the car out of the snow when I got back to Rozaje, and then drive 5 hours through the winter) and it will definitely be on The List next year. Except next time I’ll plan it better…