Drummers dance as Marijus Aleksa and Famoudou Don Moye light up in Lithuania

What magic! What a musical journey! What beguiling rhythms and melodies! What creativity between avant-garde jazz and African drum traditions Famoudou Don Moye and his Odyssey & Legacy Quintet bring to the stage of the time-honoured Old Theatre in Vilnius. And the spark jumps over to the totally enthusiastic audience. But how can this mixture of the legendary drummer from Rochester, New York, who among other things helped to write jazz history as a member of the Art Ensemble Of Chicago, not grab you while listening! This mix of ritual drumming, spiritual singing, jazz fragments and wonderfully swinging moments are too seductive, the band members like the Senegalese drummer and singer Dudu Konaté or the Frenchman Simon Sieger, who plays the piano just as grandly as the trombone and also masters various percussion instruments - simply a dream. The fact that this second festival evening of the 36th Vilnius Jazz also begins with a solo percussion concert by Lithuanian Marijus Aleksa should have made drum fans completely happy. Aleksa, who was presented with this year's "Vilnius Jazz Annual Award" before his performance, also takes the audience on a wide musical journey that also touches on Africa. And his drumming is very differentiated. He’s no loud show-off, here playing a lot with the mallets, refined rhythmic patterns and cleverly composed soundworlds.

Famoudou Don Moye gets into the groove - Photo by Greta Skaraitiene

The new trio of British saxophonist Shabaka Hutchings, Moroccan guembri and kalimba player and singer Majid Bekkas and US drummer Hamid Drake is also spiritual, since the music of this trio is based on the Gnawa music of Morocco. Especially when Bekkas sings emotionally to his pointed guembri sounds. But Hutchings, who plays a variety of different (bamboo) flutes in addition to the tenor saxophone, also shows a very spiritual side in this constellation. The link in this exciting trio between Gnawa, black soul and contemporary jazz is Hamid Drake, who is also visually placed exactly in the middle of his two colleagues. He accompanies, fills-in, comments-on and holds everything together with extremely creative playing.

There were many other things worth hearing at this year's Vilnius Jazz. For example, the solo piano concert by Brian Marsella. At a full hour, it was perhaps a little too long, because the US American doesn't always tell exciting stories on the black and white keys. But often he does, and in Lithuania's beautiful capital he always turns out to be a creative spirit full of ideas. Lithuanian saxophonist Liudas Mockũnas, in a duo with Swedish woodwind player Mats Gustafsson which later was extended to la quartet with US bassist Tom Blancarte and Danish percussionist Christian Windfeld, once again showed what a powerful, expressive and imaginative improviser he is. As a guest for one piece, Mockũnas also joined the fabulous quartet of Portuguese drummer Mário Costa on the last evening of the festival, whose free swing not only inspires with interesting rhythmic and tonal structures, but also opens up spaces for the band colleagues Benoȋt Delbecq (piano & synthesiser), Bruno Chevillon (double bass) and Cuong Vu (trumpet) for conversations with each other, for their very individual musical statements. And the young talent competition "Vilnius Jazz Young Power" threw an interesting light on the young Lithuanian jazz scene, as it does every year. This year's winner of the competition, tuba player Mikas Kurtinaitis, connected three other tubas placed in different places in the concert hall with long tubes in his short solo performance and was thus able to control all instruments with the one in his arm.

Cuong Vu – Photo by Greta Skaraitiene

In addition, festival organiser Antanas Gustys once again demonstrated his unerring instinct for putting together individual concert evenings. To put the great Trio North of the explosive, energetic, physically playing Danish alto saxophonist Mette Rasmussen, whose improvised jazz unfolded its fascination and full force after a few minutes of start-up time, directly in front of the Louis Sclavis Quartet, this idea worked wonderfully. After all, the French clarinetist is also an expressive woodwind player, a strong improviser, whose music, which is always a little folkloristically tinged and otherwise boldly explorative, is clearly more song- and melody-oriented, also because of the line-up of his band with a pianist, the fantastic Benjamin Moussay.