This year, the 34th edition of the festival will be graced by Lithuanian and foreign music virtuosos - Cuban pianist Alfredo Rodriguez and the Kaunas City Symphony Orchestra. The concert, which will be the crowning event of the Kaunas Jazz year, will take place on 4 December at Kaunas Žalgiris Arena.
Cuban-born, US-based Alfredo Rodriguez is already well-known to the Kaunas Jazz audience. In the summer of 2021, he performed in Palanga and Trakai with renowned bassist and vocalist Richard Bona, and in 2022, he gave an ovation-laden solo concert at the National Kaunas Drama Theatre.
Nominated for a prestigious Grammy Award, Alfredo has been impressing jazz professionals with his virtuosic playing style for almost two decades.
At the age of 18, Alfredo was already being cited by critics as one of the most promising jazz talents. He was helped to get his foot in the door by the renowned producer Quincy Jones, who became his mentor and advisor.
Compared to legendary pianists Bill Evans and Thelonious Monk, he has released several albums featuring a fusion of jazz and other genres with Latin American rhythms.
"He's definitely one of the finest young pianists I've ever seen. He has incredible abilities and his potential is limitless," says Quincy Jones, who has worked with Michael Jackson and many other of the world's greatest talents.
In 2015, Alfredo was nominated for a Grammy Award in the category of best instrumental arrangement for his recording "Guantanamera".
Jazz, salsa, bachata, rumba - this musician takes to the stage with an energy that fuses southern heat with western finesse. This is particularly evident in his latest album, Coral Way, released last year and featuring the Grammy-nominated Cuban music sensation Cimafunk.
This latest album, by the way, symbolically sums up a joyful, but also challenging phase in Alfredo Rodriguez's life over the last few years, during which he met the Kaunas Jazz audience for the first time.
It's worth adding that Alfredo Rodriguez is known as a man who can not only play the piano virtuosically, but can also tell stories. And to do so in a very personal way - every concertgoer leaves feeling like a friend.
The orchestra, which will celebrate its twentieth anniversary this autumn, under the direction of Algimantas Treikauskas, is an important phenomenon of Kaunas and Lithuanian cultural life. In the past seasons, the orchestra has successfully completed exclusive worldwide publishing projects and has had the honour of performing with the world's top opera soloists.
The orchestra has also performed on numerous occasions with the world's most prominent rock and pop artists, such as the Scorpions, Bonnie Tyler, Chris Norman, and others.
