A truly special event will take place at JazzBook on Monday evening, May 4th. It is the final of the first edition of the national Tiberian Continuum national competition. For more details, we reached out to Romina Dumitru from JazzBook, whom we now warmly welcome to Radio România Muzical.

Greetings to you as well, and to your listeners.

The competition is not being held on May 4th by chance. Tell us more about the context.

If he were still with us, Mircea Tiberian would have turned 71 on Monday, May 4th, and this date was chosen to celebrate both this moment and his entire body of work and artistic legacy.

Speaking more specifically about the competition, many of his former students will actually be on stage. How did the idea for this competition come about, and how did you select the finalists?

The idea for the competition emerged from a conversation between Darius Rus, the owner of JazzBook, and Vlad Popescu, his colleague and a university professor at the National University of Music in Bucharest. It came naturally after Mircea passed away. More than that, it crowns a series of events that we organize monthly at JazzBook, also called Tiberian Continuum, meant to celebrate his work and bring forward young musicians who were his students or who are, in one way or another, inspired by his story.

Who are the artists who will be performing?

In this first edition of the competition, six projects have entered. And since it is the inaugural edition and we slightly adjusted the rules for reaching the final we decided together with the jury to bring all six projects into the final. The projects, listed in the order of registration, are: Resonance, led by George Vizitiu, alongside Sebastian Mihai, Dimitrie Cristian Milea, and Lorin Mihalache; Marinela Radu and Andrei Mânzat, performing as a piano and voice duo; Duo Dumas, featuring Ștefan Coman; Open Chorus Quartet, led on piano by Spînu Tudor Cristian, together with Trifon Filip, Nistor Cristian, and Toma George Cătălin; Duo Ditto, formed by Teodora Dima and Antonia Dragomir (piano and voice); and Ștefan Rus, a solo pianist a very young talent discovered relatively recently.

Let's also reveal the jury members, all well-known musicians.

I'll start with Toma Dimitriu, a pianist familiar to many, who also has an album recorded with Mircea Tiberian. Then Sorin Romanescu, guitarist and producer an artist I would call complete, involved in much more than just performance and Vlad Popescu, whom I mentioned earlier, a professor at the National University of Music in Bucharest, a former colleague of Mircea's, and a drummer.

Let's also share some practical details about the schedule and access to the final Tiberian Continum.

The final will begin on Monday, May 4th, at 6:00 PM and will run until around 10:30 PM. What will happen on the JazzBook stage are essentially six mini-concerts. Each participating project will perform three pieces, all drawn from Mircea Tiberian's repertoire. Two of them are set by the jury, while the third is chosen by the participants. Access is based on a ticket, for those who wish to support both the young artists and this newly launched competition. Tickets can be purchased online via the Eventbook platform or at the venue. Importantly, all proceeds from ticket sales will be donated to Mircea Tiberian's family more specifically, to Ioana.

Thank you very much for this interview, and we look forward to hearing more from you about upcoming JazzBook events. To close, let's listen to a piece by Mircea Tiberian a beautiful solo piano composition entitled It Could Have Been So Simple.

Thank you very much for the invitation, it's been a pleasure. We'll gladly come back with more updates about what's happening at JazzBook.