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Russian jazz festival marks the 15th anniversary with sold-out concerts

The festival managed to confirm the status of a large-scale international music event, giving Russian audience an opportunity to see both new artists and well-known artists, Maria Semushkina said

© Mikhail Tereshchenko / TASS

ARKHANGELSKOE /Moscow region./June 3. /TASS/. The 15th Usadba Jazz festival that was held on June 2 and 3 in the Moscow region became a sold-out show, the founder and president of the festival Maria Semushkina told TASS.

The festival managed to confirm the status of a large-scale international music event, giving Russian audience an opportunity to see both new artists and well-known artists, she said.

"I am very glad that the festival confirms the international status every year," Semushkina said.

"We brought a lot of interesting musicians and gave the audience an absolutely new quality of artists such as The New Power Generation and Jacob Collier who performed in Russia for the first time," she added.

The festival's president also noted that this time the open-air event was lucky with the weather.

"We were very lucky with the weather - both days we see a huge number of people on the site, "she said.

This year the organizers of the festival tried the format of a public business discussion for the first time. Experts of the music industry discussed ways to promote jazz musicians. "This is very important: we should not only entertain, but give new meanings to the audience," Semushkina noted.

Russia's Usadba Jazz festival

Usadba Jazz is the biggest Russian open-air festival joining jazz, funk, world music, acid-jazz, lounge, jazz-rock, blues and other styles of contemporary improvised music.

The Festival was held for the first time in May 2004, at the Arkhangelskoe Estate, a masterpiece of 18th century Russian architecture situated on the outskirts of Moscow ("Usadba" in Russian means Estate). Since then the Festival has become an annual event in Arkhangelskoe.

Since 2011, the festival has also been held in St. Petersburg and since 2013 - in Yekaterinburg. Moreover, since 2014 Usadba Jazz also has held a venue in Voronezh and since 2016 - in Sochi.

During this time, more than 1,000 musicians took part in the festival.

This year, the 15th anniversary festival was be held in Arkhangelskoe on June 2 and 3. Among its guests were Grammy-Award winning bassist Richard Bona (US), saxophone player Donny McCaslin (US) jazz singer Peruquois (Australia) famous Russian rock band Auktsion, renowned balalaika player Alexei Arkhipovsky, one of the most famous Russian jazzmen in the world Igor Butman with his quintet.

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