The Ploiești Jazz Festival, now in its 19th edition, will take place in Ploiești from October 24-27. The four evenings of concerts will start at 19:00. Vlad Mateescu, director of the local philharmonic, gave us more details about the event in an interview with Viorel Grecu on About the rubric Romanian Jazz Society.

The Ploiești Jazz Festival starts tonight. At the "Paul Constantinescu" Philharmonic there will be four days of very diverse concerts with Romanian musicians and guests from the United States. More information will be coming shortly from Mr. Vlad Mateescu, director of the" Paul Constantinescu"Philharmonicin Ploiești. He is on the phone with us now.

Welcome to Radio România Muzical.

Thank you very much for the invitation. It is an honor and a joy to be with you.

Ploiești Jazz Festival is an event that this time is in its 19th edition, even though Ploiești was the first city in Romania to give birth to a jazz club and the first jazz festival 55 years ago. In 1969, Ploiești hosted the first jazz festival in Romania. So, the tradition has gone on and we are holding a festival of a different kind, which is held under the high patronage of Her Majesty Margareta, Custodian of the Romanian Crown, an event organized by the Ploiești Philharmonic in partnership with the Municipality of Ploiești, under the aegis of the Youth Capital Ploiești 2024, and is also one of the events that is part of the Europe Jazz Network.

The opening of the festival, as we are accustomed to every year, will be performed by the symphony orchestra of the Philharmonic Orchestra of Ploiesti. It will be a symphonic jazz program under the baton of the young conductor Radu Zaharia, together with soloist Diana Țugui. It is a program with Leonard Bernstein, George Gershwin, Andrew Lloyd Webber.

Friday, October 25th: Ploiești Jazz Trio, with well-known singer Luiza Zan, and Nicolas Simion Quartet.

The Ploiești Jazz Trio is a philharmonic group, with pianist Sorin Zlat, bassist Răzvan Cojanu and drummer Laurențiu Ștefan.

Exactly. It is a group, a new department created a few years ago, a department of the philharmonic of Ploiești.

Saturday will be the international evening of the festival. Two groups from United States are coming, please tell us more about them.

It's about Jonathan Kreisberg Trio and Kennedy Administration. It will be a show evening, just as it will be on Sunday evening. It will be an evening with lots of interesting instruments, instruments which maybe are hard to find in Romania. One of them will even be a Hammon C3, an interesting organ which most of the time is used in blues. It will be a show in every sense of the word, because we are talking about groups that perform on the most important stages of the world, especially in New York.

Sunday evening, the last evening of the festival will again have local flavor, local ensembles will performe.

It's so nice to have this local flavor, to be our own, to be colleagues with these exceptional artists who, I repeat, they perform and are invited to all festivals in Romania and not only, in all philharmonic in Romania. The Ploiești Philharmonic Choir with the Ploiești Jazz Trio and Eduard Dinu as conductor will open the evening on Sunday with a Swinging Voices & Jazz Notes program. It is a program including gospel and negro spirituals, it is a band program with choir, a very uplifting program I might say, which will close with a tribute to Natalie Cole, under the chords of the Ploiești Big Band Jazz Society. A band that works as a project, so to speak, a band that this time will be directed by Simona Strungaru, the conductor of the Radio Big Band, with Sorin Zlat as guest, who is of course part of the Ploiești Jazz Trio - but this is one of the projects they have proposed and we are open to these ideas - and Mihaela Alexa on vocals, who will perform Natalie Cole, in a very special way.

The event can also be watched by those who cannot physically make it to Ploiești.It can be watched live online.

Yes. Ploiești Philharmonic owns a Virtual Concert Hall platform. It is the only pay-per-view platform in Romania, a system that allows the public from all over the world to watch live and recorded concerts taking place in the Philharmonic. It is true that we recommend, precisely because this festival happens once a year, that people come to the hall, even if it would be much easier, but the feeling, the experience, the energy that people have when they are in the concert hall, when they interact with the artists, is absolutely unique.

Congratulations for this festival and thank you for the interview.

Thank you very much as well and we look forward to welcoming you.