# This Might Be Jazz opens just as majestically. Leonardo Pavkovic’s uncompromising and knowledgeable devotion to music: Video

- Link: https://jazzblues.eu/2018/03/17/this-might-be-jazz-opensjustas-majestically-leonardo-pavkovics-uncompromising-and-knowledgeable-devotion-to-music-video/
- Published: 2018-03-17T10:25:56+01:00
- Author: https://JazzBlues.EU

**Leonardo Pavkovic** **is the primal force behind the joyously eclectic MoonJune
Records, which he established in 2001. “Established” may not be the right word: “
I am truly an unusual and rules breaking call-it-record-company with a ‘label’ identity
despite the fact that as a person and as a ‘label’ I go out of any categorization
and labeling of what I do,” he confided before our interview. “I am a stubborn Don
Quixotesque romantic warrior and one-man-band army wearing many hats.”**

MoonJune’s mission statement: The ongoing goal of MoonJune is to support music that
transcends stylistic pigeon-holing, but operates within an evolutionary progressive
musical continuum that explores boundaries of jazz, rock, avant, ethno, the unknown
and anything in between.

**Leonardo Pavkovic** was born in Bosnia in the former Yugoslavia in 1962. He was
raised in southern Italy and studied Portuguese and Brazilian literature at the 
University of Bari (Italy) and Afro-Portuguese History and Literature at the University
of Luanda (Angola, Africa) en route to becoming fluent in six languages. Before 
MoonJune, he translated artistic and scientific literature from/to Italian, Portuguese
and Serbo-Croatian, and published two volumes of original poetry. Pavkovic established
MoonJune Management and Booking, now MoonJune Music, in 2000, copping its name from“
Moon in June,” a Robert Wyatt tune on the third album by Soft Machine, one of his
numerous prog-rock-jazz-fusion inspirations.

MoonJune Records is only part of Pavkovic’s impressive music business reach. As 
a booking agent, he has coordinated more than 2,000 concerts in more than 50 countries
worldwide. Even though MoonJune Records consumes a great deal of his energy and 
time, he still does not consider it his “main business”; instead, it’s just one 
more chapter in his lifelong diary of musical surprises.

MoonJune Music is the musical equivalent of Forrest Gump’s proverbial box of chocolates.
You never know what you’re going to get: An improvisational jazz-rock quintet built
around guitar, trumpet, and bass clarinet, named for a North Korean dictator and
the martial arts style instructed by Grandmaster “Iron” Kim (Iron Kim Style, 2010);
jazz-rock ensemble fusion led by Israel’s version of Walter Becker and Donald Fagen(
Breaking the Cycle, Marbin, 2011); or ancient Indonesian temple ritual music and
traditional gamelan percussion employed as rhythmic loops upon which jazz players
can solo almost forever (Demi Masa, simakDialog, 2009), to name just a few of its
far-reaching flavors.

Consequently, MoonJune Record reviews seriously stretch a writer’s analytic and 
descriptive faculties, not to mention ears—this writer’s, at least.

In late 2017, Pavkovic assembled the twenty-five track compilation It Must Be Jazz
to celebrate the label’s fourth-place finish in DownBeat’s annual “Best Jazz Label”
poll (up from seventh place in 2016) and released it as a free digital download 
to thank the label’s fans. Its title track was jointly composed by guitarist Allan
Holdsworth, keyboardist Alan Pasqua, bassist Jimmy Haslip and drummer Chad Wackerman
for Blues for Tony, their 2010 ensemble tribute to powerhouse jazz-rock drummer 
Tony Williams who passed away in 1997. This high-voltage piece of electric jazz-
rock fusion was born from sentiment and experience: Holdsworth replaced John McLaughlin
for a year as the Tony Williams Lifetime guitarist, and both Holdsworth and Pasqua
were members of The New Tony Williams Lifetime.

This Might Be Jazz opens just as majestically, with the title track to Indonesian
pianist Dwiki Dharmawan’s landmark Pasar Klewer, regarded one of the top jazz albums
of 2016. Dharmawan’s playing, especially when accompanied by just bass and drums,
sounds absolutely ferocious as it splatters chords and rhythms all over the ivories,
mixing up mainstream, free and avant-garde jazz piano. “Indonesia is the place of‘
ultimate diversity,'” the pianist explained upon Pasar Klewer’s release. “Here, 
the urban cultures accelerate the ‘acculturation’ process, which generates changes
in cultural patterns and creates new forms of musical expression. Pasar Klewer is
the answer to my search for ‘the difference,’ and also a valuable answer to our 
modern crises and urban uprooting. The album’s distinctive sound originates from
an ancient Gamelan tonal system called Salendro, known in the Karawitan traditional
music of the Sundanese, Javanese and Balinese.”

Pavkovic’s uncompromising and knowledgeable devotion to music has earned in return
the same affection from MoonJune’s musicians. “Leonardo’s perspective on music has
served to encourage and inspire musicians throughout Indonesia to create the music
on a higher level,” explains Ligro guitarist Agam Hamzah. “MoonJune Records has 
been great in its impact, helping to orchestrate so many positive changes for the
benefit of the Indonesian music scene and its artists. Being associated with Leonardo
and MoonJune Records as a musician and as a friend is an honor and a privilege.”

“Like its namesake orb, MoonJune steadily casts its light across a commercially 
ravaged musical landscape without ever capitulating to the market, a rare paragon
of musical virtue in ever more culturally bankrupt times,” suggests guitarist Dennis
Rea (Moraine, Iron Kim Style, Zhongyu).

“Because his vision and erudition know no physical or mental boundaries, MoonJune
might seem an oddity founded by a starry-eyed idealist, a rather utopian proposition
in our increasingly prefab musical world,” muses guitarist Michel Delville (The 
Wrong Object, Machine Mass, DouBt). “But, to me, MoonJune is not just a record label
pushing out alternative music. It feels more like a family of like-minded musicians
keen to explore new grounds while collaborating with each other and engaging in 
a dialogue between the past and the present.”

![Image result for Leonardo Pavkovic](https://i0.wp.com/farm3.static.flickr.com/
2406/3530689160_ea5023905f.jpg?w=640)

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