Expatriate Serbs and a Czech were the highlight of the last day at Novi Sad Jazz Festival 2026: Photos -

Novi Sad Jazz Festival over. Novi Sad Jazz Festival was a completely new experience for the undersigned. There were only two invited foreign media outlets present – Jazzwise from England and salt peanuts*.

And why the festival had invited us, we have no idea. But as the only foreign media outlets, there was plenty of time for long conversations about the well-being of jazz, especially in our two home countries, plus other countries we are familiar with.

But I will not bother our readers with these conversations now. But since salt peanuts* is in a period of adjustment right now, I got some good tips from the British Isles.

At most jazz festivals I know of, things tend to calm down and things return to normal on Sunday. But here there were, in fact, even more concerts on the closing day than on the other days.

Even though we haven’t mentioned all the concerts, we feel that we have managed to present a kind of average of the festival, with the main focus on the “main concerts”, with small detours to some of the most exciting of the others.

And common to the whole weekend has been the folk festival. But unlike the folk festivals that some Norwegian festivals focus on, where folk festivals mean that you have to serve something other than jazz, here they have raised the jazz fan relatively high.

More than approved from Belgrade

I started this last day with , who delivered very typical New York jazz, with driving alto saxophone from Rastko Obradović, brilliant accompaniment and excellent piano playing from the bandleader. It is clear that the club jazz from New York, both the one you can hear in the small clubs today, and the legacy of loft jazz, was present in the quartet. I suspect that the musicians have moved from Serbia and are in other parts of Europe, and their second album, which is about to be released, was recorded in Cologne in 2024. A band to watch out for in the coming years.

Universal, where are you?

Then it was time for Sunday’s main attraction. The pianist and vocalist Francesca Tandoi is presented in the program text as “One of the most prominent and most virtuosic musicians on the contemporary international jazz scene”. She has appeared on a number of recordings, including a pair with saxophonist Scott Hamilton. And that’s when the program text starts to get confusing.

She comes from Italy, and is an artist who is able to charm the audience in a hurry, and at first I have to admit that I liked the pianist.

She came to the festival with a bassist and a drummer, but they were not mentioned in the program. But if it was the same line-up as on her latest self-titled release, it would be bassist Matheus Nicolaiewsky and drummer Sander Smeets. But that doesn’t really matter, because it was, without a doubt, the pianist who was the main attraction this hour.

Francesca Tandoi is a technically excellent pianist, who can do “everything” on the 88 keys (or however many there were on the Boston grand piano). The only thing I have to complain about is that she constantly had to show how many styles she mastered, and how fast she could play. But I think it was especially bad when she had to sing. Because it didn’t work! She has a singing voice that I can easily compare to the many young female vocalists who do what I call “squeaky pop”, but here in a jazz version.

She records perfectly okay compositions, without much more than that, and these were combined with several standards such as “Body and Soul”, a Jobim composition and a couple of others. But when she, with her lack of ability for good vocals, did a tribute to Devie Wonder, it became especially bad.

The fellow musicians delivered what they had to, and we got some nice solos. But the impression I was left with was that this was a good pianist, who could have lowered her shoulders and taken it more easy occasionally, and who should stick to playing the piano, and not try to become the new Dianne Krall. But I think it is certain that, for example, the record company Universal will make persistent attempts to get her into the “stable”, I think.

Serbs who have moved out plus an excellent Czech

The last band out of the evening, on the big stage called Katoliča Porta, which is located in front of the big cathedral, was the drummer Vladimir Kastadinovic Quartet (main picture), with the Czech Stephan Flagar on tenor saxophone, plus the Serbians Katarina Kochetova on piano and Milos Colovic on bass.

And here we were back to the main concert yesterday, with Joe Lovano. The drummer Kastadinovic has, with good reason, been praised to the skies, including in Down Beat. And his album IRIS (Criss Cross) has received brilliant reception. He has played with musicians such as Joe Locke, Benny Golson, Chris Potter, George Garzone, Kevin Hayes, Seamus Blake and yesterday’s Antonio Faraó, and he spends more time in New York than in his home country.

Saxophonist Flagar has a relatively raw and heavy tone, and can be compared to both Sonny Rollins and Joe Henderson. He is extremely creative in his playing, and weaves some inspiration from his homeland into the American music or so.

Pianist Kochetova worked excellently behind the piano, and kicked the other musicians forward, together with the bandleader. And since Colovic’s bass playing was consistently excellent, this was an excellent end to the festival, while Norway fought against Brazil in the World Cup – an event that I signed a boycott of because it is held in the USA, but which I could not help but notice that Norway won.

A festival with many new, exciting names, and a lot of fun
Three wonderful days in a long-awaited summer, with exciting highlights, especially with Faraó and Lovano on Saturday and the last concert on Sunday, in glorious summer heat in a relatively small, and exceptionally pleasant town, with only nice people wherever you went, and a nightlife that is, almost, unparalleled. And because the festival organized so many free concerts in the city’s streets and squares, a large part of the residents showed their time to visit, and showed up in droves, even on Sunday evening.

I will gladly return next year, and the year after that again, for the festival’s 30th anniversary. And many thanks to the excellent hospitality both from Milana, who took good care of the two foreign press accredited, and the staff at Hotel Veliki.