The International Jazz Square Festivalthe main event of this musical genre in Cuba, premieres a new image for its 38th edition, scheduled to be held in January 2023.
The event, which will take place in the cities of Havana and Santiago de Cuba, will have a renewed visual identity, based on a work by the notable Cuban artist Arturo Montoto.
Montoto himself defined his creation as a “surrealist apparatus” that resembles a gramophone without being exactly one and from which baseballs emerge. As the artist explained this Wednesday, his work intends to honor “the music that remains in the memory,” as well as the links between it and Cuba’s national sport.
In addition, during a press conference held at the emblematic Hotel Nacional de Cuba, Montoto considered the opportunity to create the image of Jazz Plaza “a great honor” and praised the design work carried out based on his work to shape the new visual identity of the festival.
In the meeting with the press, the organizers also reported that the musical theme “Madre Oshun”, by the renowned pianist and composer Roberto Fonseca – artistic director of Jazz Plaza – will accompany the promotional campaign of the 38th edition of the event, while they advanced details of the next festival, which hopes to recover face-to-face concerts on a large scale, after the limitations of recent years as a result of the pandemic.
Víctor Rodríguez, president of the Organizing Committee, confirmed that the event will take place from the 22nd to the 29th of next year, and that a large presence of international artists is expected, as well as the best of the genre on the Island.
Although there are still several months to go before its celebration, Rodríguez announced the attendance of musicians from countries such as the United States, Spain, Germany, Colombia, Puerto Rico and Canada, and paid tribute to the Original de Manzanillo and NG La Banda orchestras, as well as to the important composer and essential figure of the “feeling” movement Martha Valdeswith a concert with his works in a jazz key.
The inauguration, as he said, will be carried out by the important guitarist Dominic Miller, who was already in this year’s edition, together with the National Symphony Orchestra. He also reported on a show dedicated to peasant music and a concert starring Los Muñequitos de Matanzas, a distinguished group of Cuban rumba that is celebrating seven decades of experience.
The main venue for the event in Havana will be the National Theater, although there will be presentations in other spaces, as well as on various stages in Santiago. Similarly, according to the organizers, the Jazz Plaza will again host theoretical sessions in the “Leonardo Acosta in memoriam” Colloquium and will once again serve as a framework for the First Line meeting, which brings together specialists from the music industry.
In this 2022 Jazz Plaza had a hybrid format, which combined face-to-face and virtual activities, and a wide presence on the internet, social networks and television, at a time when Cuba was experiencing a resurgence of COVID-19 caused by the Ómicron variant. . Now, although the organizers hope that the concerts and other activities on-site have the greatest prominence, television broadcasts and on digital platforms will also be maintained, as a way to multiply the audiences and the scope of the event.
