Art and music lovers of Moscow can combine their interests this week at the Garage Museum of Contemporary Art, where a jazz festival to celebrate the life and music of John Coltrane will bring sultry sounds to the venue's atrium.
“Sound. Light. Shape” brings jazz improvisation back to the building that used to be a popular concert venue in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Through next Sunday, Garage will host a packed program of talks and concerts celebrating everything from early jazz subgenres to contemporary improvisation.
When the Garage building opened in 1968, it was home to “Vremena Goda,” a popular concert and dancing venue which attracted audiences interested in new music like jazz and beat. The venue will once again come alive with the sound of music as audiences enjoy performances from Alexei Kruglov’s Krugly Band, Yury Yaremchuk’s Quartet and Oleg Grymov’s Quartet as well as experimental jazz by Godse and Konstantin Sukhan.
John Coltrane is renowned for having pioneered free jazz, a movement in which musicians rejected the limitations of strict tempos and traditional conventions to create their own progressive musical language.
The musician, who was born in North Carolina in 1926, had a profound effect on both the art and music worlds. His aesthetic strategies, based on the indefinability of art and spontaneity, linked with parallel directly with developments in visual culture.
Lectures will include an in-depth look at Coltrane’s life and work, as well as the history of jazz in the Soviet Union and the evolution of contemporary art.
“Sound. Light. Shape” runs through Sept. 25 at the Garage Museum of Contemporary Art. 9 Krymsky Val, Bldg. 32. Metro Oktyabrskaya, Park Kultury
