Bogotá has become a fundamental space for the jazz evolution in Colombia and an important platform for the circulation, development, strengthening and consolidation of jazz scene in the country and in Latin America; and this year, within the Jazz in the Park Festival 25-year celebration, the Instituto Distrital de las Artes – Idartes, is the guest of honor at the VI Valparaiso Jazz Festival, a city that received the designation of Creative City of Music by UNESCO in 2019.
The participation of Bogotá, which in 2012 was declared Creative City of Music by UNESCO, in this event organized by the Management of Culture of the Valparaiso’s City Hall, will be through two virtual sessions focused on the memory of the Jazz in the park Festival will allow the public to connect with an alternative to delve into the history and impact of this surprising and exciting musical language constantly reinvented.
This event will begin on October 23 at 5:00 pm with a selection of music and videos of key moments in the Curupira creative process, a pioneer group from Bogotá of new Colombian music made up of six multi-instrumentalists, travelers and researchers who have been able to connect different cultures and they offer a sound journey where they fuse Colombian folklore with Hindustani music, jazz and rock. In addition, the impact of the Jazz in the Park Festival on the artistic career of this group from Bogota will be discussed.
The Curupira members together with Jaime Andres Monsalve, musical director of Radio Nacional de Colombia, will talk about the importance of the Jazz in the Park Festival in the construction of a Bogotá jazz scene and on the stage being the point of departure for several city’s jazz groups; revealing why the anniversary of this group and the Jazz in the park Festival 25-year commemoration are twinned processes.
The second presentation is scheduled on October 24 and will be a historical tour of the Big Band Bogotá project, an important creative laboratory that has managed to bring together many of the most outstanding composers, arrangers and performers of the jazz scene in Bogota and Colombia, promoting the meeting of different generations and talents characterizing the jazz legacy in the city, and training audiences in several traditional and non-traditional stages.
In the performance to be shown at 5:00 pm through Facebook and the YouTube channel from Valparaíso, Catalina Valencia Tobon, director of Idartes, and Daniella Cura, artistic programmer of the Jazz in the Park Festival, will present a video selection of Big Band Bogotá project historical shows including musical works performed since its inception in 2010, which in turn constitute a part of the vast district and national jazz tour.
Jazz in the Park Festival 25 year Celebration
Due to the fact that this year the Jazz in the Park Festival will not be held in person because the contingency generated by COVID-19, it will celebrate its quarter century with a series of digital products in the form of a large multimedia and interdisciplinary archive of memory covering the history of the Festival and its impact on the development of Bogotá jazz, and will be released between November and December 2020.
It is a transmedia product including the audiovisual “Mutating Jazz” series, the podcast series “Jazz in Podcast”, the digital musical compilation “Jazz in the Park, 25 years in 25 songs”, the virtual bank of Big Band Bogotá scores, and an interactive book that will house and compile the other products. All this so that citizens have full and free access to a unique experience and fundamental material, not only for their enjoyment, but also for learning, research and study.
In addition, within the 25th anniversary of the Jazz in the Park Festival, the Idartes’ Music Department invited small and medium format jazz groups to participate in the adaptation of the original Big Band Bogotá repertoire, for carrying out a cycle of three itinerant concerts that will arrive in different areas of a selected borough in Bogotá in November, as a special tribute to this creative and sound laboratory in the city.