Azerbaijan attending Montreux Jazz Festival
By Amina Nazarli
The 48th Montreux Jazz Festival is running in Switzerland.
Founded in 1967 by Claude Nobs, the festival has turned into an important event for music fans both in Switzerland and abroad over the past years. Most of great musicians across the globe have performed at least once on the festival's various stages.
This year, Azerbaijan is also among the main participants of the festival that will run till July 19. It was co-organized by Azerbaijani company SOCAR together with other sponsors.
Azerbaijani musicians showed their talent on July 16, turning it into the festival's Azerbaijan Day.
Natiq group headed by Natiq Shirinov showed their best performance on this day.
Before his performance, Shirinov spoke about the history of Azerbaijani Nagara. "There is rhythm, there is a life in it," he said.
Then the group thrilled the audiences with wonderful show of
national rhythms of Azerbaijan. It ended its concert with a song
from great Muslim Magamayev "Azerbaijan".
Legendary American funk and soul jazz saxophonist Maceo Parker also
attended the event where he shared the scene with "Rast" group
headed by Azerbaijani honored artist Rashad Hashimoiv.
His respectful approach to Azerbaijani national instrument Balaban was warmly welcomed by Azerbaijanis. They jointly performed songs "Bana-bana gel" by Cahangir Cahangirov, "Hit the road jack" by Ray Charles and "Mas que nada" by Jorge Ben Jor that got applauses from the audience.
Later, Maceo Parker played on Azerbaijan national instrument Nagara, which was another honored moment for Azerbaijani music.
The concert ended with the performance of the Azerbaijani national music "Sari Gelin".