Garana jazz festival turns into real pilgrimage, maestro Florian Lungu says

The Garana jazz festival, at its 22nd edition, has turned the tiny village at the foot of the southwestern Semenicului Mts. into a genuine pilgrimage that has become well-known for the fans of this kind of music, said maestro Florian Lungu.

"The foreign artists have found at Garana not only a numerous audience, but also a receptive, enthusiastic one, capable to take over, understand and make it their own the world of beauties that is supposed to be this creativity jazz map. Year after year, this festival becomes more and more important in our musical landscape. Several jazz events exist nowadays, none of which of such a scope. Apart from the large number of concerts and from the fact that the event is hosted in three distinct locations, some other cultural events do happen here. Moreover, besides the music itself, what Garana offers from the nature's point of view is way beyond expectations and I'm talking here about the particularly clean air and the landscape around us," said Florian Lungu.

The festival that has kicked off on Thursday had included four concerts per day on the Poiana Lupului stage, two concerts from Friday to Sunday on the stage of the La Rascruce /At Crossroads inn's courtyard, the place where the event "was fathered", and three concerts on Friday, Saturday and Sunday at the Catholic Church of Valiug.

"This year's festival was denser, with as many as 25 concerts. One of them is more than a concert, it is a cultural happening that has included a painting mounting with piano and guitar jazz improvisations of a great artist of Banat, Gheorghe Fickl. The other concerts were performed by world reputed stars," said the chairman of the Jazz Banat Cultural Foundation, Marius Giura, the event's organiser.

In addition, all that has taken place at La Rascruce inn was under the umbrella of Romanian Jazz Meeting, a project that occurs in almost any important European country, added Giura.

"I've decided that it is high time that such event happens in Romania as well. Invited were Europe's festivals' directors, worldwide select journalists who see our musicians at work and then could invite them to perform," the Jazz Banat Foundation head said.

For an event at the top of a mountain, in a totally undersized village for such an audience inflow where accommodation is impossible to find with one year in advance, conditions for the increase of the number of spectators are very hard to create. Therefore, starting with 2008, the annual number of the Garana festival's participants parked at circa 15,000.