At the much-awaited third Katara European Jazz Festival that took off on Tuesday, music groups from nine European countries will be transporting the audiences to a dreamy, jazzy realm, every eventful evening until Monday.
Each of the nine concerts — venue is the Katara courtyard behind Building 5 — promise to unlock a mesmerising musical experience as each of the nine bands happen to be among the foremost contemporary artistes of their respective countries. Be it Germany’s Three Fall that is slated to perform on Friday at 7pm, for instance, or Bulgaria’s Yildiz Ibrahimova Quartet which will follow right after at 8.30pm.
The maverick German ensemble Three Fall comprises two wind instruments and a drummer, excluding the standard bass and chord instruments, as they tear into hearty jazz that picks influences from hip-hop, funk and reggae roots. As for the Bulgarian act, they say you have to hear the delightful fusion of Ibrahimova’s four-octave range and her accomplished vocal technique to believe it, while she courses through jazz, classical, free improv and various types of folk music with equal ease.
Then, there’s Austria’s sax-keys-drums unit Namby Pamby Boy who after developing a healthy distaste for “genre, meaning, and purity”, decided to make music that circumvents “the stifling encumbrance that these words represent.” They will perform on Saturday at 8.30pm.
About the other bands, a quick run through the schedule reads as follows — Portugal’s Trio Mario Laginha at 8pm, tonight; Spain’s Radio Pesquera at 7pm on Saturday; Switzerland’s Simon Wyrsch Quartet at 8pm on Sunday; and Poland’s Atom String Quartet at 8pm on Monday. To know more about them and the essence of this Festival, Community spoke with the ambassadors of six of the nine participating European nations:

Eric Chevallier, Ambassador of France
The Katara European Jazz Festival is now a well-established festival in Qatar, being organised this year for its third edition. I think it is very important to a country like Qatar which boasts of so much cultural diversity. The European embassies are presenting music that unites us all. Jazz is now a universal musical heritage and what we want to display are its different forms. This year, we are proud to present the “tuareg blues” band EZZA. This group is quite different from the ones we presented before, as it is not a purely jazz band. We made the choice to present a band that blends Saharan music, jazz, groove, and blues. EZZA represents the cultural diversity and wealth of France. It promotes universal values such as peace and tolerance.

Guido De Sanctis, Ambassador of Italy
Music is a powerful way of building bridges between cultures. In Italy, music plays a prominent role in our national identity. We strongly supported the idea of hosting a European Jazz Festival in Qatar, when we first started in 2014, with the outstanding support from Katara Cultural Village. Jazz music is a unique blend of different cultures. It’s an excellent mark of how various cultural backgrounds may combine together, as it happens every day here in Qatar. This year, we present an exceptional band, ‘The Golden Circle Quartet’, a ‘supergroup’ that brings together four great Italian solo musicians. They perform an innovative mix of free jazz and improvisation, a pure sample of Italian creativity. This will be their first performance in the Gulf, after a very successful tour in Asia.

Krzysztof Suprowicz, Ambassador of Poland
Poland is proud to participate for the first time in this Festival, which is the biggest and the most prestigious jazz event in Qatar. Our country has been known for the accomplishments of its musicians who contributed largely to jazz traditions and development of this genre in Europe and across the world. This year, we are bringing to Doha the finest of young and vibrant Polish jazz groups, Atom String Quartet. It features four extremely talented violin players exuding energy that is befitting their band’s name. This unique ensemble will present Qatar’s audiences with a genuine, non-conservative attitude towards jazz music and its interpretation. This year, only Atom String Quartet has so far held concerts in Poland, Switzerland, Austria, France, UK, and recently in Egypt. On Monday evening, they will certainly present their best on the Katara stage.

António Tânger, Ambassador of Portugal
This year will be the first time that Portugal participates in this Festival, with the support of Instituto Camões, the Portuguese Institute for Cooperation and Language. This cultural festival is clearly important for Portugal and Qatar as it’s approaching the two countries in the field of culture. As we now know, culture is increasingly recognised as a vehicle to accomplish not only the cultural but also the economic and political goals. Portugal regards ‘Trio Mário Laginha’ among the best Portuguese Jazz bands, if not the best. This will be the first time they will be performing in Qatar even though they have performed in Portugal and abroad for many years. After hundreds of concerts across the European continent and two recorded albums, Espaço and Mongrel — the latter inspired by the music of Chopin — the trio has developed an intimate musical relationship. Among the myriad of styles visited by Mário Laginha’s music, the trio travelling to Doha is the one that is more closely connected with jazz.
 
Ignacio Escobar, Ambassador of Spain
The embassy of Spain participates for the second time in this Festival as the cosmopolitan and multicultural nature of jazz perfectly reflects the image that both Qatar and Spain want to show to the world. Jazz is the most universal and rich of all musical expressions and you can find a jazz band and jazz lovers in any country in the world. Doha is not an exception. Radio Pesquera, the band we are presenting on Saturday evening, shows this idea of mix of traditions and different musical flavours. Pablo Novoa and Nono García have joined their guitars in mixing jazz, blues, flamenco, and latino music, melding their different Galician and Andalusian origins but sharing the seaside way of living. As Qatar, Spain is a coastal country where the sea connects people, ideas and culture like a melting pot. We are sure that the current edition of this Festival will meet the expectations of the Doha audience and will become a yearly meeting point in the region for music and jazz lovers.

Etienne Thévoz, Ambassador of Switzerland
The Swiss band Simon Wyrsch Quartet plays different styles of jazz, which sometimes are dedicated to blues, swing, bop, as well as to bossa nova, free jazz and funk. I am particularly happy that Simon Wyrsch, as the bandleader, had proposed these musical ranges in his programme, which is based on the album Behind the Truth. The band was especially and uniquely composed for this concert in Doha. This happens to be the band’s first appearance in Qatar. Jazz has many voices and faces. Europe has different shapes, cultures, and languages, and even Switzerland, as a small country, shares the same particularity, where people peacefully co-exist despite their different nature. Differences in general are not a disadvantage, but create an own identity, which should be respected. Jazz jumps into this role by combining different and sometimes controversial elements. The Embassy of Switzerland would also like to thank Katara Cultural Village Foundation and Qatar Airways as reliable and precious partners. Without them, these concerts would not have been possible to realise.