Phat Cat Swinger coming to the Street Musicians Festival!
FIRST STARS CONFIRMED FOR THIS YEAR’S STREET MUSICIANS FESTIVAL
The performance on the 15th Street Musicians Festival has been confirmed by the American masters of swing Phat Cat Swinger from California, and the Belgrade jazz band Belgrade Dixieland Orchestra.
Phat Cat Swinger, Apple Valley, California – The biggest stars on this year Street Musicians Festival are certainly the members of the ten-strong swing band Phat Cat Swinger.
September will mark their first arrival to Serbia – from Apple Valley, a city in the Sunny State of California – in high spirits to give the excited audience in Novi Sad an unforgetable evening of song and dance. West Coast swing, boogy-woogy, rockabilly and rock ’n’ roll from the 50s, performed live by these talented, experienced musicians, whom you will certainly enjoy if you are into the likes of Big Bad Voodoo Daddy, Royal Crown Revue, Squirrel Nut Zippers and Cherry Poppin’ Daddies. The legacy of the great Brian Setzer is easilly recognized in the music of Phat Cat Swinger, as well as the melodies and rythms that once upon a time decorated the albums of the greats Bobby Darin, Frank Sinatra and Cab Calloway.
Sax players Marko Palos and Will Pattinson founded the “swing machine” called Phat Cat Swinger “one hot Callifornia night” in August 2002. During the next thirteen years, they managed to record two studio albums, with a series of fantastic originals, as well as holding numerous successful live performances all across concert and dance halls in the United States and Europe.
Interestingly, we all saw the Phat Cat Swinger band eight years ago in the very atractive video for Christina Aguilera’s hit song “Candyman” and also three years ago in the video for the song “In The End” of the successful Irish alter-rock band Snow Patrol. Alt, tenor and baritton saxophones are first in line, closely followed by the singer, all the while joined by the solos from the trumpet, trombone, keybords, guitar, double bass and drums. The set list of songs that Phat Cat Swinger does on concerts, as we found out, is known to be very “colorful” – somewhere in the range “from Sinatra to The Black Keys”.
The Main Stage of this year’s 15th Street Musicians Festival, in the centre of Novi Sad, will host the American masters of swing, Phat Cat Swinger, on Saturday 5th September.
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Belgrade Dixieland Orchestra, Belgrade, Serbia – The Belgrade jazz band Belgrade Dixieland Orchestra is in existance – just as the Street Musicians Festival is – a decade and a half.
The group numbers eight: singer Aleksandra Bijelić, keyboards Aleksandar Miletić, brass section Sava Matić, Nemanja Zlatarev and Veljko Kenkovski, Vladimir Racković on banjo, Ivan Maksimović on double bass and on drums Miloš Milosavljević.
“When all thought that this wonderful kind of jazz was extinct in our country for ever, some new, strong force propelled eight courageous people to pull it back from the bonds of memory and yet again return to the audience that wonderful atmosphere and swaying music from the beginning of the 20th century”, announced the members of the Belgrade Dixieland Orchestra, the only ensemble of its kind in Serbia.
Dixieland arrived to the space of former Yugoslavia by the end of 1953. This type of music is regarded as the first major style in jazz, and was created by African-American and Creole musicians from New Orleans, who combined elements of blues and ragtime with the tradition of the brass orchestra. The most famous jazz musician that came from New Orleans was certainly the great Louis Armstrong.
The Belgrade jazz band Belgrade Dixieland Orchestra, is a group that has in a short amount of time quickly grown into, as can be notices, an important cultural institution of the Serbian capital and a unique representative of our countries musical culture.
Belgrade Dixieland Orchestra will perform on this year’s Street Musicians Festival shoulder to shoulder with Phat Cat Swinger on Saturday, 5th September.
Belgradedixielandorchestra.com
Facebook.com/Belgrade-Dixieland-Orchestra
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This year’s 15th anniversary edition of the Street Musicians Festival will be held from 3rd to 5th September, in Novi Sad, when same as every year, in the spirit of street art and the artists’ home, regional and world culture, it will breathe a new, fresh energy into the City.
The Street Musicians Festival is organized by the Art Association “Inbox” from Novi Sad, with support from the City of Novi Sad and the Provincial Secretary for Culture and Information, Tourist Organization of the City of Novi Sad, the USA Embassy in Belgrade and the Serbian Petroleum Industry.
