# 18 years Inside the rhythm: My continuing journey through the Tbilisi jazz festival: Videos, Photos

- Link: https://jazzblues.eu/2026/05/12/1-8/
- Published: 2026-05-12T20:35:54+01:00
- Author: https://JazzBlues.EU

**For eighteen consecutive years, I have returned to the beating heart of the Tbilisi
International Jazz Festival as if returning to a beloved standard whose melody never
fades, only deepens with time.**

And now, in 2026, during the festival’s remarkable twenty-ninth edition, I realized
that throughout its long and radiant history, I have missed only eleven chapters
of this extraordinary cultural symphony.

That realization alone carries the emotional weight of a jazz ballad: memory, devotion,
improvisation, and the passage of time intertwined like blue notes beneath the warm
lights of a midnight stage.

The festival has become far more than a musical event. It is a living organism of
rhythm and spirit, a sacred annual gathering where generations meet through sound.
In Tbilisi, jazz does not merely perform — it breathes.

It walks through the streets, echoes through conversations, settles into cafés and
theaters, and rises each evening with the anticipation of discovery. The city itself
transforms during the festival into an instrument of resonance, vibrating with the
energy of swing, fusion, avant-garde exploration, blues melancholy, and spiritual
freedom.

For nearly three decades, the festival has stood as one of the great cultural bridges
between worlds. It has united American jazz tradition with European experimentation,
Caucasian soulfulness with global virtuosity.

On its stages, legends and innovators have spoken a universal language beyond borders
or politics: the language of improvisation, courage, listening, and emotional truth.
Every performance has carried its own weather system — sometimes fiery and ecstatic,
sometimes intimate and reflective — yet always profoundly human.

What makes the Tbilisi International Jazz Festival so unique is its atmosphere of
intimacy despite its international prestige. Even the largest performances feel 
personal, as though the musicians are playing directly into the hearts of the audience.
There is an unmistakable sincerity there.

Artists arrive not simply to perform concerts, but to communicate, to take risks,
to search for transcendence in real time. One can feel it in the silence before 
a solo begins, in the collective breath held during an unexpected harmonic turn,
in the eruption of applause after a daring improvisational passage lands perfectly.

Over eighteen uninterrupted years, I have witnessed countless moments that now live
in memory like fragments of an endless composition: pianists sculpting impossible
harmonies from silence, drummers conducting storms with brushes and cymbals, bass
lines that seemed to anchor entire emotional universes, saxophone cries that carried
both celebration and sorrow.

Each year added another movement to a personal suite of experiences, and each edition
revealed that jazz remains eternally alive precisely because it never stands still.

The 2026 edition once again confirmed the festival’s artistic greatness. It honored
tradition while fearlessly embracing the future. There was elegance in the programming,
intelligence in the curation, and deep respect for both the masters and the emerging
voices carrying jazz into new territories. The festival understands a truth many
forget: jazz is not nostalgia. Jazz is motion. Jazz is conversation. Jazz is resistance
against emotional emptiness.

And perhaps that is why returning every year feels so essential. The festival reminds
us that art still possesses the power to gather people together in genuine communion.
In an increasingly fragmented world, these nights in Tbilisi become acts of collective
listening — thousands of hearts synchronized by rhythm, harmony, improvisation, 
and soul.

To attend the festival for eighteen consecutive years is to witness not only the
evolution of jazz, but also the evolution of oneself through jazz. The music changes,
the musicians change, the city changes, and yet the spirit remains beautifully constant:
open, fearless, emotional, free.

The Tbilisi International Jazz Festival is not simply a festival. It is a tradition
of artistic dignity. A sanctuary for improvisation. A celebration of humanity through
sound. And after all these years, it still feels like hearing the opening notes 
of a masterpiece for the very first time.

There are concerts that leave behind a resonance long after the final note disappears—
performances in which every phrase feels necessary, every silence meaningful, every
improvisation capable of altering the emotional temperature of an entire room.

![May be an image of saxophone, piano and text that says '-JAZZ FES TBILISI TBILISI2TH
29 ΤΗ JAZZ FESO JAZZFESTIVAL FESTIVAL nard 10 ー MA'](https://scontent.fevn6-3.fna.
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During this year’s Tbilisi International Jazz Festival, both the trio of Fred Hersch
and the incendiary ensemble led by Marc Ribot achieved precisely that rare state
of artistic transcendence. Their concerts were filled with tension, depth, danger,
elegance, and profound musical intelligence. Against such performances, however,
the concert by Kinga Głyk and her quartet unfortunately felt surprisingly lightweight
and emotionally underdeveloped.

The disappointment did not come from technical incompetence. On the contrary, Kinga
Głyk is undeniably a skilled bassist with impressive command of groove, timing, 
and stage confidence. Her playing often displayed agility and precision, especially
during the more rhythmically driven passages. Yet throughout the concert, one had
the persistent feeling that technique was substituting for substance. The music 
frequently remained trapped at the surface level of polished jazz-funk formulas 
without ever evolving into something emotionally risky or compositionally memorable.

Perhaps the greatest weakness of the performance was its predictability. Jazz thrives
on uncertainty — on the possibility that a phrase might suddenly fracture into abstraction,
that harmony might open unexpected emotional doors, that musicians might challenge
one another into new territories in real time. None of that tension truly emerged
here. The arrangements often felt overly rehearsed and structurally rigid, leaving
little room for genuine improvisational discovery. Solos arrived exactly where expected,
developed in familiar patterns, and resolved safely without surprise or dramatic
narrative.

![May be an image of turnstile and saxophone](https://scontent.fevn6-6.fna.fbcdn.
net/v/t39.30808-6/690678647_1415280133970521_8121481243236513956_n.jpg?_nc_cat=100&
ccb=1-7&_nc_sid=f727a1&_nc_ohc=lrH7q3QlMeMQ7kNvwHSB_Ko&_nc_oc=AdrDwiER9L1yEaSwmipQ1zCn7fRwvOhgd-
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oe=6A09652D)

This became especially evident after the monumental emotional architecture of Fred
Hersch’s performance. Hersch transformed the piano into an entire psychological 
landscape, moving effortlessly between fragile lyricism and breathtaking harmonic
sophistication. Every note in his concert carried emotional consequence. In contrast,
much of Kinga Głyk’s set felt designed primarily to maintain pleasant momentum rather
than to communicate deeper artistic urgency. The difference was not merely stylistic;
it was philosophical. Hersch approached jazz as a form of existential storytelling.
Głyk’s quartet, unfortunately, too often approached it as entertainment content.

The contrast with Marc Ribot’s concert was even sharper. Ribot’s ensemble radiated
danger, unpredictability, political energy, and raw human friction. His music constantly
seemed on the verge of collapse or revelation, which gave the performance its electricity.
By comparison, Głyk’s concert rarely escaped its comfort zone. Even during louder
or more energetic moments, the music lacked genuine emotional stakes. The quartet
performed competently together, but there was little sense of collective risk-taking
or deep conversational interplay among the musicians.

Another issue was the sonic uniformity of the set. Many compositions blended into
one another with similar grooves, similar dynamic arcs, and similar tonal atmospheres.
What initially felt vibrant gradually became repetitive. The rhythmic pulse remained
steady, but the emotional palette remained narrow. There were few moments of silence,
rupture, fragility, or contrast — the very elements that often give jazz its dramatic
power.

![May be an image of text](https://scontent.fevn6-3.fna.fbcdn.net/v/t39.30808-6/
690676693_1415279663970568_4491609685865549695_n.jpg?_nc_cat=111&ccb=1-7&_nc_sid
=f727a1&_nc_ohc=Q1wiX1S7DeoQ7kNvwHHtjr9&_nc_oc=Adr8fPVMf-qpq9YX3WtcHM09j7qWYN6KopixhuQPiwAn563OvoIIurdbIQBPpTVAPXWhRzLgI3eJSt05gILMbfyH&
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oh=00_Af6UlXgdlr2DHAP9UOdUDJR-pHYtVj2CKvsTdN_n0NFf0A&oe=6A095153)

The audience reaction, while warm and respectful, also seemed noticeably less emotionally
invested than during the festival’s strongest performances. There were applause 
and appreciation, certainly, but not the stunned silence or overwhelming collective
immersion that characterized the concerts by Hersch or Ribot. One sensed admiration
for professionalism rather than genuine artistic transformation.

To be fair, not every jazz concert must aspire to darkness, abstraction, or spiritual
intensity. There is room within the genre for accessible groove-oriented music and
melodic fusion aesthetics. Yet even accessible jazz requires narrative shape, emotional
sincerity, and a sense of necessity. Too often, this concert felt aesthetically 
polished but emotionally distant — music that was pleasant to hear in the moment
yet difficult to remember afterward.

In the context of the Tbilisi International Jazz Festival, where several artists
delivered performances of astonishing artistic depth, Kinga Głyk’s quartet unfortunately
appeared outmatched by the surrounding level of creativity and expressive courage.
The concert was not disastrous, nor devoid of talent, but it lacked the emotional
gravity, improvisational imagination, and artistic risk that define truly memorable
jazz experiences.

And perhaps that was the most frustrating aspect of the evening: the sense that 
the performance remained content with being merely competent at a festival that,
at its best moments, demanded greatness.

Even within the limitations of the concert, the individual musicians surrounding
Kinga Głyk occasionally revealed flashes of personality and professionalism that
hinted at a stronger artistic potential than the overall performance ultimately 
achieved.

Drummer Rodney Barreto was perhaps the most consistently compelling presence in 
the quartet. His playing carried a certain elasticity and technical discipline that
tried to inject momentum into arrangements that too often remained harmonically 
static. Barreto’s groove was clean, controlled, and occasionally explosive, particularly
during the more fusion-oriented passages where he attempted to push the music toward
greater rhythmic urgency. Yet even his energetic accents and dynamic cymbal work
sometimes felt constrained by compositions that rarely allowed the ensemble to fully
ignite.

![May be an image of guitar](https://scontent.fevn6-4.fna.fbcdn.net/v/t39.30808-
6/690653765_1415279117303956_306695920869097405_n.jpg?_nc_cat=104&ccb=1-7&_nc_sid
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oe=6A096A34)

Saxophonist Lucas Saint-Cricq brought a warmer and more lyrical dimension to the
set. His tone possessed sensitivity and polish, and several of his solos briefly
introduced the emotional nuance and melodic storytelling that the concert otherwise
lacked. There were moments when Saint-Cricq seemed ready to pull the music into 
deeper territory, especially during more spacious passages where his phrasing became
more expressive and harmonically adventurous. Unfortunately, these moments were 
often cut short before they could fully develop into something transformative.

Keyboardist Arek Grygo provided much of the harmonic framework throughout the evening,
though his role frequently remained limited to atmospheric textures and functional
accompaniment rather than genuine interaction. His sound palette leaned heavily 
toward polished fusion aesthetics, sometimes creating lush backgrounds but rarely
introducing the harmonic tension or unpredictability that might have elevated the
music. Still, Grygo demonstrated professionalism and restraint, supporting the ensemble
structure without overpowering it.

Taken individually, the quartet members were clearly capable musicians. The problem
was less about technical ability and more about chemistry, risk, and artistic direction.
Too rarely did the musicians truly challenge one another or enter the kind of spontaneous
collective dialogue that defines memorable jazz performance. Instead of becoming
a living conversation, the concert often resembled a carefully managed sequence 
of polished but emotionally cautious musical episodes.

The Tbilisi International Jazz Festival once again proved why it remains one of 
the most important and emotionally vibrant jazz events in the region — a festival
where legendary artistry, fearless improvisation, and the timeless spirit of jazz
continue to transform Tbilisi into a city of rhythm, imagination, and unforgettable
musical dialogue.

![May be an image of one or more people and text](https://scontent.fevn6-6.fna.fbcdn.
net/v/t39.30808-6/682304277_1406947138137154_5169707440613852059_n.jpg?_nc_cat=102&
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