This autumn, from September 16 to 25, Garage invites visitors to Sound. Light. Shape—a music festival celebrating what would have been John Coltrane’s 90th birthday.
A series of music events in Garage Atrium will bring jazz improvisation back to the building that used to be a popular concert venue in the late 1960s and early 1970s.
John Coltrane’s music embodied the aesthetic strategies of the second half of the twentieth century, based on the ideas of indefinability of art, spontaneity in performance and the importance of context.
For a decade after its opening in 1968, Garage building, which then housed the restaurant Vremena Goda, was a popular concert and dancing venue which attracted audiences interested in new music like jazz and beat. Visitors to Sound. Light. Shape will be immersed in the world of jazz improvisation—looking back at this time with people who were there, engaging in creative activities, and listening to music in our reconstructed modernist space.
The program of Sound. Light. Shape will include a series of jazz concerts ranging from early jazz subgenres to contemporary improvisation. This will include performances from Alexey Kruglov Krugly Band, Yury Yaremchuk Quartet and Oleg Grymov Quartet as well as other groups including experimental Godse Quintet and Torn Boots Trio.
The festival will also include a series of lectures on: the life and work of John Coltrane, the history of jazz in the Soviet Union and the developments in visual culture that came about in parallel to John Coltrane’s jazz. (Mark Rothko, Jackson Pollock, German neo-expressionism and ‘archaic’ strategies of Anselm Kiefer and Joseph Beuys).
A pop-up exhibition in Garage Atrium will feature rare Coltrane records from the 1950s–1970s, John Coltrane's light sculpture by Valery Martynchik, photos of Soviet jazz enthusiasts and an interactive object by the Moscow-based Playtronica. Both kids and adults will be able to take part in various workshops organized for the festival, exploring sound and visual improvisation.
During the first weekend of the festival a Jazz Family Day will be held, where families with kids will be able to take part in improvisation workshops, learn how to make jazz musical instruments from whatever is at hand, enjoy a concert and get discounts on the kids’ menu in Garage Café and children's books in our bookshop.
This short film program presented as part of the music festival Sound. Light. Shape., features three cinematographic declarations of love for jazz from both sides of the Atlantic. Interestingly, in the Soviet Union, jazz was appreciated and loved as much as in its homeland, the US. All three films are world cinema classics and, coincidentally, were made when each of their respective directors was aged thirty one. For two of them, these were their debut films, which brought them overnight success.