Schedule of events - Donostia Kultura

Samara Joy

Few figures in the history of Jazz have had as a meteoric rise as Samara Joy. Let alone at such a young age. At just 26, her career is already nothing short sensational.

A five-time Grammy winner, including Best New Artist, Joy has become a top-tier presence, with visibility worthy of the biggest pop stars. Her impact has taken her to major television networks and connected her with new generations through platforms such as TikTok. Her track record thus far as a performer speaks for itself: she has featured at legendary festivals such as Newport, Monterey or Montreal, and performed at iconic venues such as the Apollo Theatre, Carnegie Hall, the Village Vanguard or Jazz at Lincoln Center.

A native of the Castle Hill neighbourhood in the Bronx, she grew up surrounded by music. Her grandparents, Elder Goldwire and Ruth McLendon, led the Philadelphia gospel group, The Savettes. Her father, Antonio McLendon, a musician and composer, toured with Andraé Crouch and recorded his own repertoire. As a child, she fell in love with classic R&B and honed her voice in the gospel choir of her church. She discovered Jazz in her teens at the Fordham High School for the Arts, where she won the Best Vocalist award within the prestigious Lincoln Center Essentially Ellington programme. In 2019, she won the Sarah Vaughan International Jazz Vocal Competition. That was a turning point for her, launching her definitively onto the professional scene.

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Nils Petter Molvær - Khmer

Nils Petter Molvær (trumpet). Eivind Aarset (guitar), Jan Bang (live sampling), DJ Strangefruit (DJ), Audun Erlien (bass), Rune Arnesen (drums), Per Lindvall (drums), Sven Persson (sound design), Tord Knudsen (lighting design)

A key figure in contemporary European Jazz, Nils Petter Molvær has been weaving a language of his own since the 1990s; a language in which the trumpet can breathe without difficulty between electronic, improvisation and sound exploration. At this 61st edition of Jazzaldia, he will offer up his wonderful reinterpretation of his debut album: Khmer (1998).

He has worked regularly with the big names of Scandinavian Jazz, and is also one of the most sought-after artists internationally. His music has broadened the horizons of Jazz in recent decades and left its mark on an entire generation. 2023 was the year of the 25th anniversary of Khmer, a revolutionary album that was a definite milestone, opening up new territory, where Jazz could freely converse with trip-hop, drum'n'bass, ambient, techno, industrial music and electronic. Powerful rhythms, pulsating grooves and an unmistakable trumpet, loaded with intensity and warmth, were the main ingredients of an album that remains a seminal work of contemporary Norwegian Jazz.

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Pat Metheny Side-Eye III+

Pat Metheny (guitars), Chris Fishman (keyboards), Joe Dyson (drums), Jermaine Paul (bass)

Pat Metheny is probably the most influential and charismatic Jazz guitarist of recent decades. In a career spanning more than half a century, he has achieved something that very few musicians can say they have truly accomplished: the constant reinvention of the sound of his instrument while remaining true to his identity. His music, luminous and complex, is a seamless back-and-forth between melodic warmth and harmonic exploration, between the freest improvisation and the most detailed composition.

Born in 1954 in Kansas City into a family of musicians, Metheny began playing the trumpet at the age of eight, till he discovered, at the age of twelve, that the guitar was going to be the instrument he would definitively make his own. While still a teenager, he was already playing with the best Jazz musicians in his hometown, absorbing the pulse of the blues and the swing tradition that would come to mark his style forever. At just twenty, he made the leap onto the international scene alongside vibraphonist Gary Burton. Since then, his name has been associated with a new way of understanding what the Jazz guitar is: such smoothness and flexibility in his touch when he performs, with rhythmic and harmonic sensibility ahead of its time. And boundless curiosity.

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Diana Krall

Undoubtedly one of the most outstanding and beloved figures in contemporary Jazz. Her extraordinary sensitivity on the piano, her warm, evocative voice, her natural elegance and her unmistakeable, intimate tone have made her an artist that appeals to everyone everywhere. Over the last few decades, Diana Krall has shown that she is perfectly able to marry her respect for Jazz with a modern and personal vision, carving out a unique niche for herself between classical Jazz and popular music.    

Born in Nanaimo, a small city in British Columbia, (Canada) she started playing the piano at the age of four and by fifteen was already performing regularly at a local restaurant. Her father, a passionate piano lover and great connoisseur of figures such as Fats Waller, James P. Johnson or Earl Hines, was her first major musical influence. A grant allowed her to formally train at the prestigious Berklee College of Music of Boston, where she began a career that would later take her to international stages.   .

After Berklee, she moved to Los Angeles, where she came into contact with some of the great names of Jazz, like Ray Brown – her mentor, with whom she collaborated in her first projects – John Clayton or Jimmy Rowles. In 1993, she released her first album, Stepping Out, and not long after that began her fruitful collaboration with legendary producer Tony LiPuma, with whom she recorded some of the most important albums of her career: All for You (1995), Love Scenes (1997), When I Look in Your Eyes (1998), The Look of Love (2001) y Live in Paris (2003).

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