Tanjazz 2008 - Morocco Newsline

Morocco Newsline - Once again, now in its 9th year, TANJAzz will bring jazz-lovers, fans and the uninitiated, to the city of the Strait, to listen to all stripes of cosmopolitan, relaxed and upbeat jazz.

This year there are many new aspects of the programming and organization to discover: uncommon musicians, new locations, new sponsors and exciting programming.

After a detour to the lawns of the Cricket Club in 2007 (because of the new public gardens in the Mendoubia), TANJAzz is returning to the city center. The festival is putting down roots in Moulay Hafid Palace des Institutions Italiennes, just steps away from the Grand Socco. The two main stages, which will host two concerts a day, will be located in this superbly restored building. The concerts will take place at 7:30pm on the Comarit Stage and 10:30pm on the BMCI Stage.

There will also be two locations for the after-party: Castel Palace, where the music will be more than just for listening; it will be for dancing, from 10pm to 3am, and the Glenfiddich Club, where we recommend you reserve your table to continue swinging until dawn.

Many emblematic sites in the city are affiliated with the festival. The Movenpick hotel, the Rif Hotel and Spa, and the Continental Hotel will host live-music brunches, dance lunches, piano lounges and more.

According to the festival’s tradition, the streets of Tangier will also be included in the party thanks to daily parades at the end of each afternoon and free outdoor concerts at Place des Nations, where the Veolia Stage will accomodate easy-listening jazz and Moroccan fusion.

Because Jazz is not only a type of music, but also a culture, TANJAzz 2008 will also have an incarnation on the big screen thanks to the Collection Jo Milgram. The collection of rare and unique films about jazz from 1916 to 2005, which Milgram collected during his passionate life, will be screened at the new Cinematheque de Tanger, located in the old Cinema Rif in the Grand Socco. Also planned for the exhibition space in the Moulay Hafid Palace is a photography retrospective of TANJAzz by Pascal Bouclier and Jean-Luc Poudou, close friends of the festival since its inception; as well as the exhibition “Jazz is Female,” a photo series of women singers by Cédric De Lievre, whose photograph of Billie Holiday appears on this year’s poster.

Jazz That Knows No Bounds Nor Preconceptions

The jazz this festival offers is a jazz that knows no bounds nor preconceptions: from the chords of the gypsy guitarist Bireli Lagrène mixing in a duo with Sara Lazarus; to the latin jazz of the Cuban piano prodigy Chuchito Valdès with the flautist Leonel O Zuniga and the Havana Street Band; from the incredible Belgian Octet Jazz Me Do covering the hits of the Beatles in jazz arrangement, to the funk blues made in Chicago of trumpetter Boney Fields with The Bone’s Project; or even M’Oudswing, a group that got together with the intention of creating a bridge between the jazz of Philadelphia and the rhythms of North Africa and the Middle East.

“Jazz is above all a music of freedom,” declares Phillipe Lorin, President of the eponymous foundation that organizes TANJAzz. “Neither a prisoner of its past, nor a music uncertain about its future, Jazz lives intensely in the moment. Open to all kinds of influences from the Far East to the Far West, it values improvisation at its core. Tanjazz aspires to be an Ambassador of Jazz, something which has a thousand facets, makes fun of would-be intellectuals and listens with its nerves, its heart and its gut,” he concludes.

This spirit of openness at Jazz’s very core is undoubtably at its best at TANJAzz, in this city where atmospheres, cultures and dreams comingle and blend together. This jazz festival is one of the last ones in the world to still guarantee such an authentic encounter between musics, artists, and their public, and to offer a space for conviviality that allows for living, vibrating, dancing, dining, toasting and breathing 100% jazz for five days of freedom.

www.morocconewsline.com/tanjazz2008