Last weekend in the Chapel of St. Petersburg the first and largest jazz event took place – Jazz Across Borders Forum & Festival.
Dina Nurgaleeva, director of Magnetophone Music Agency, was invited as a program producer by Igor Butman and Roman Khristyuk.
The team was set a big and serious task – within 2 months to implement the project from the beggining. We, of course, assumed that the forum would arouse interest, but probably did not think that the interest would be so great. For 2 days JAB was visited by more than a thousand (!!!) participants from almost all corners of Russia, as well as from more than 30 countries!
The program consisted of 4 parts: JAB Conference, JAB Showcase, JAB Clubnight and JAB Gala.
JAB in numbers:
– JAB Conference was attended by more than 50 speakers from Russia and from abroad,
– JAB Showcase was performed by 12 groups, including residents of Magnetophone Music – LRK Trio,
– at JAB Clubnight in four clubs in St. Petersburg, played concerts of 12 collectives,
– on jam after the concerts the musicians played until 6 am,
– Vocals, saxophone, trumpet and musical production workshops were held at different venues.
– The final chord of the forum forum was the grand concert of JAB Gala in the large hall of the Capella, at which the GRAMMYs laureates performed – the most outstanding vocalist of the present Kurt Elling and the pianist, composer and arranger John Beasley, the Canadian saxophonist Kent Sangster, accompanied by the Moscow Jazz Orchestra, artist of Russia Igor Butman, as well as collectives of Alina Rostotskaya, Oleg Butman and Oleg Akkuratov.
We wish all of us that the level that this year’s First Forum Jazz Across Borders asked this year, went up even the next year and learned about Russian jazz as much as possible abroad!

Photos by Olga Karpova (JazzMap.ru)