The Radio Big Band, conducted by Simona Strungaru, performs on Thursday, the 21st of March, from 19:00, with saxophonist Cristian Soleanu as special guest. Thus Cristian Soleanu returns with the orchestra he was part of for almost three decades, until 2019. The programme, called Short Stories, is made up exclusively of compositions by the saxophonist. A few thoughts from Cristian Soleanu before the concert, in the interview made by our colleague Viorel Grecu.

Concert by the Radio Big Band and Cristian Soleanu at Sala Radio. Come back with the Radio Big Band after five years, if I'm not mistaken. What is this reunion like?

The reunion is exciting in many ways. Seeing some of my former colleagues and returning to the stage where I have been active for almost 30 years and working with the orchestra and Simona on music, some of it fresh, all of it, entirely mine, so the emotions are heightened on every subject.

Basically it's an interference of old and new, familiar and unfamiliar, because a lot has changed with the Big Band, things have probably changed with you too. About the compositions we'll hear and the arrangements. All original, written by Cristian Soleanu.

Yes. Some of them I conceived before 2018. In 2018 I had another concert in this role as soloist of the Big Band. They were already played then, and the new half I worked on this year, even in the last two months, intensively.

From the concert announcement I realized that there is also a piece inspired by the Radio Big Band itself, after the title.

Yes, one of the pieces is written in 2018 for my colleagues at the time. It's called the Studio 6 Big Band Suite, because we were rehearsing in Studio 6 at the time, and then we did a composition especially for the orchestra.

How do you feel about the current Big Band formula? Have you seen it in concert before, how did the rehearsals go?

The current line-up is made up of some of my former colleagues and some people who have been employed for a few years. One good thing is that they've been the same for quite a while now. In the last period when I was working in the orchestra there were already many concerts where collaborators came, or this music with its specificity and getting to know the one on the left and the one on the right takes a while. In general, orchestras of this type, jazz big bands, take months, even years to form, keeping the same people.

It's common knowledge that although you are one of our most valuable jazz musicians, you have recorded quite little, especially under your own name. Now we have some compositions, some arrangements, is anything going to happen with what we're going to hear on Thursday night at the Radio Hall, in the sense of being immortalised on record?

The story of immortalisation on disc is not just about me. Of course, a lot of it is down to me and a certain ambition to see things through. I still have some archives of recordings that are to be put on discs, but now it takes a lot of stars aligning to make a record happen. We'll see what happens after Thursday night, maybe Radio House would request the recordings, we wait, see what might come out.