The KOKTEBEL JAZZ PARTY returns to the Black Sea coast of Crimea 20-22 August. The organisers say it is “a world of smiling faces and joyful people escaping from the stilted and the tedious, from limits and kitsch into the heady freedom of dancing waves and salty air that blend in with the music liberating body and soul.” In 2017 Vladimir Putin made an address at the festival after being welcomed with a screaming reception worthy of that afforded the Beatles.
Guildhall School of Music presents “A HISTORY OF BIG BAND: THE DAWN OF MODERNISM” (14 May) featuring the Guildhall Big Band with guest director and trombonist Callum Au playing music associated with Nancy Wilson, Ella Fitzgerald, Astrud Gilberto, Dizzy Gillespie, Billy May, Nelson Riddle, Gil Evans, Gerald Wilson and Oliver Nelson. The school say “Dizzy Gillespie's Manteca will provide the overture for this exciting journey through this multi-faceted age: the dawn of modernism, bebop and the golden age of the star vocalist, their arrangers and the great studio orchestras of Capital (sic) Records.”