a musical journey through the life and times of jazz

Every Saturday night at 21:30 the “Jazz Express” departs from the multicultural and multiethnic New Orleans of the roaring ‘20s, following the tracks to the north, until it reaches Kansas City, taking us for a ride throughout the history of blues and jazz.

Back in those years, extravagant musicals and theater productions became the vehicle, which musical geniuses like Kurt Weill, Cole Porter, Duke Ellington and George Gershwin used, to transform their musical inspirations into reality. On the other side of the tracks, the oppression of Prohibition and segregation and the poverty and misery, which came with the Great Depression of the ‘30s, drove people underground to find relief in an alternative repertoire.

The Jazz Express reaches New York City on the eve of World War 2, as the Big Bands dominate the stages, while a new kind of musical expression, Be- Bop, begins to take shape at the underground clubs. Inside those small, dimly lit, smoky clubs, pioneers like Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, Dizzy Gillespie, Charles Mingus and many others put their fingers on the new pulse of the era, jamming and improvising until the early morning hours, until they found that all-encompassing expression, constantly enriching itself and adapting to the human condition, without losing touch with its roots.

Our journey will come to an end as it began, way back in New Orleans, with the Blues -that beautifully simple form, which gave birth to jazz and still keeps us in touch with our souls, at a time, when things seem to have become very complicated and alienated.

A group of the finest musicians, consisting of guitarist and vocalist Marcos Papassifakis, pianist Manos Athanassiadis and double-bassist George Roulos, is backing up three extremely talented young ladies. The program has two cycles, fitting the vocal particularity of the singers, featuring consecutively Mando Panayiotaki and Miranda Makrinioti.

Starting from the 8^th of November 2014, for a limited number of shows

PERFORMANCES
Saturdays at 21:30

Duration: 100΄