The Birštonas Jazz Festival 1980–1990
By Rūta Skudienė
Although jazz was tolerated in Lithuania at the time, it was still performed episodically in restaurants, cafes, and at pop music festivals, such as “Baltijos jaunystė” (Baltic Youth), “Gintarinė triūba” (Amber Trumpet), and in the State Philharmonic Hall. In 1977, with the establishment of the jazz section at the House of Artists, discussions on the revival of the Elektrėnai festival in a Lithuanian city became more frequent.1
After a 12-year interval, the history of the first festival, which later became a regular tradition, took an unexpected turn. In 1980, a long-awaited stage for jazz appeared at the House of Culture in the resort town of Birštonas. Zigmas Vileikis, a graduate of the Klaipėda Faculty of the State Conservatoire, who was appointed to work for the town's Culture Department, started to work on the organisational issues.2
The first Birštonas Jazz Festival took place on 1-2 November 1980. It was dedicated to the 16th Communist Party Congress and World Youth Day, but no one worried about this: such formal dedications were necessary. The most important thing was that there was finally a place in Lithuania where jazz could be played freely.
The first festivals were held on an amateur basis, the musicians received no remuneration. All those who wanted to perform on the stage at Birštonas needed to participate in auditions held by the organisers, and the repertoire was not regulated. Therefore, many new compositions by Lithuanian performers were played.3 A tradition emerged to hold the festival every two years, in the spring on the last weekend of March.
Thanks to the creative and professional contacts and the clever strategy of the organisers, Lithuanian composers, famous jazz critics and musicians from Leningrad, Moscow, Riga and Yerevan visited and served on the jury in Birštonas: Vladimir Feyertag, Alexei Batashev, Konstantin Orbelian and Yuri Saulsky. Until 1994, the festival was sponsored by the musicologist Liudas Šaltenis (d. 1994), one of the initiators of the event, who at the time worked for the Ministry of Culture of Lithuania. The authority of the above-mentioned musicians gave the festival some protection during the Soviet era; it eventually grew into an important international event. Getting on to the festival programme became an important appreciation of a musician's work, while attending all the concerts, a real jazz marathon, was proof of the endurance of jazz fans.
At that time, to be interested in jazz, and even more playing it, was not only in vogue and a mark of a progressive viewpoint; it testified to a certain inner freedom, opposition to Soviet ideology (during the time of political stagnation, Lithuanian Radio broadcast little foreign pop or jazz). When perestroika started, jazz fans from all over Lithuania and from other cities of the Soviet Union would gather in Birštonas. Inside the House of Culture, which could seat over 500 listeners, there were several times as many people as there were seats in the hall.4
Participants in the event were encouraged with various awards: best instrumentalist, best vocalist, best ensemble, the most original composition, etc. The most prominent musician or ensemble of the festival was awarded a specially created Grand Prize (made by Stanislovas Kuzma and Virgilijus Makačinas). The artist Rimvydas Kepežinskas created attributes for the festival since the first event, wittily improvising on the theme of musical instruments. An impressive set was created by Algis Lapienis, with lighting by Norvydas Birulis. During the festival, moments in the concerts and portraits of the performers captured by Lithuanian photographers were usually exhibited in the foyer.
Eight Lithuanian bands and the Estonian composer and pianist Tõnu Naissoo took part in the festival in 1980. Naissoo won the public award. The Alexander Fedotov trio was the winner, with Fedotov (as), Gintautas Abarius (p) and Rubin Vain (b). The organisers called the first festival a “festival of enthusiasts”, a forum with a wide range of jazz, from free jazz to traditional swing compositions.5
In the spring of 1982, the festival lasted three days. News about it spread quickly, and listeners came not only from Lithuanian towns but also from Riga, Tallinn, Moscow, Yerevan and Kaliningrad. Most of the programme consisted of performances by Lithuanian musicians. The only guest musician was the quartet of the saxophonist and teacher Raimonds Raubiškis from Latvia. The climax of the festival was the concert given by the Petras Vyšniauskas quartet, with Vyšniauskas (as, ss), Vytautas Labutis (reeds), Leonid Šinkarenko (b) and Gediminas Laurinavičius (dr). The quartet won the Grand Prix and the public award; their performance stood out by their original compositions and virtuosity. Vyšniauskas was voted best saxophonist. The most prominent performances at the 1982 festival were recorded at the Vilnius Recording Studio, and the record that was released has become a collector’s item.6
Much changed over the two years before the third Birštonas Festival in 1984: Lithuanian performers became known not only to Soviet audiences. The achievements of the Vyšniauskas quartet were impressive: laureate of the 7th Pop Artists’ Competition in Moscow (1983), concerts in Finland, and awards at the Dnipropetrovsk and Vitebsk jazz festivals. The Ganelin trio won international fame; it performed in Western Europe and released albums. At the 1984 festival, a vote for the best Soviet jazz musicians was held by the Riga Jazz Club and the Latvian newspaper Sovetskaya Molodezh. The results showed that the Lithuanian performers occupied high places.7
The main award in 1984 went to the Vyšniauskas quartet. Vladimir Čekasin received the public award. The Retro quartet from Riga in Latvia, led by Boris Kogan on the tuba (he had been playing in various jazz ensembles since 1937), fascinated the audience with its traditional performance.
Seven concerts were given at the 1986 festival. A large group of young jazz musicians performed: the Balys Dvarionas Children’s Music School Ensemble, the ensemble and big band of the Juozas Tallat-Kelpša Higher School of Music, and the Lithuanian State Conservatoire Jazz Band,8 and three dixieland bands from Klaipėda, Panevėžys and Vilnius. There was a lot of vocal jazz (Marina Granovskaya, Stepas Januška, the Latvian Television and Radio soloist Olga Pyrags, Valentina Ponomariova from Moscow, Ainars Knesis’ vocal sextet from Latvia, and Anaida Kanachan from Yerevan). The Grand Prix went to the State Conservatoire Jazz Band led by Čekasin and the Balys Dvarionas Children’s Music School Ensemble. The band performed an impressive programme: Konstantin Petrosian’s Concerto for voice and big band, and Čekasin’s Concerto for orchestra. As the prominent Armenian soloist Tatevik Oganesian was unable to travel to Birštonas, she was replaced by Kanačan, who was awarded a prize for a successful debut. The usual awards and diplomas were handed out. The public award went to Vyšniauskas.9 Two records of the festival were released.10
The 1988 festival surpassed the previous ones by the abundance of performers and by the musicians’ professionalism.11 The first jazz ensemble from abroad performed: the ensemble of the Polish jazz legend Zbigniew Namysłowski, with Namysłowski (as), Artur Dutkiewicz (p), Jacek Niedziela (db) and Piotr Biskupski (dr). The guest musicians were escorted to the stage by bodyguards (sic!), and their performance was the climax of the festival. “Their artistic abilities to play as an ensemble and their masterly melodic neo-bebop, in which elements of Polish folklore and the motifs and rhythms of the Carpathian mountains are harmoniously intertwined, became the biggest event of the festival,” wrote the musicologist Oleg Sotnikov.12
Debutants stood out among the participants: the quintet of the trombonist Skirmantas Sasnauskas, and the quartet of the double bass player Arnoldas Gurinavičius. Musicians from the popular music department of the Klaipėda Faculty of the State Conservatoire distinguished themselves by their universality. According to a decision of the organisers, the Zbigniew Namyslowski quartet, the David Azarian trio, the Vyšniauskas ensemble and the drummer Vladimir Tarasov did not compete for the main award. The Grand Prize went to the Gintautas Abarius quartet, with Aleksandras Fedotovas (as), Abarius (p), Giedrius Čekuolis (b) and Arkady Gotesman (dr). The composer and pianist Kęstutis Lušas contended for the award with a wide arsenal of synthesiser timbres and sound effects, with Granovskaya’s expressive vocals and percussion (the composition “Sunkiausia sugalvoti pavadinimą” [It's Hardest to Come up with a Name]). Vyšniauskas was awarded for the best composition “Ir švarus vanduo” (And Clean Water); he also received the public award as a saxophonist.
After a long discussion on the evaluation criteria, the jury, chaired by Konstantin Orbelyan, decided not to award the main prize this time, but in the future to give it to the musician who contributed the most to jazz in Lithuania.13 The festival performances were recorded by the Vilnius Recording Studio, and three albums of the festival’s concert recordings were released.14
From the autumn of 1988, festivals were held in other Lithuanian towns as well: the Sing Group Jazz Festival for jazz choirs and ensembles in Panevėžys, and Jazz Forum in Vilnius (Vilnius Jazz since 1989).
The Birštonas festival also took place in 1990, shortly after Lithuania declared the restoration of its independence on 11 March. Although there were fewer listeners, the festival saw more foreign musicians at Birštonas than ever before: the famous Azerbaijani performer Aziza Mustafa-Zade, the Finnish guitarist Tymo Lahto, Fredrik Norén's ensemble from Sweden, the Russian pianist Daniil Kramer, and the quartet of the guitarist Alexei Kuznetsov from Moscow. The saxophonist Remy Filipovitch (Remigijus Pilypaitis, who had left Lithuania at the end of the 1960s) gave a concert in his homeland after almost a quarter of a century. “Time has not stopped ... I am very happy to have arrived in Lithuania,” he said.15 The flautist and vocalist Neda Malūnavičiūtė and the band NNB, Arturas Novikas’ vocal ensemble, and the Vyšniauskas and Gotesman duo PetrArka made their debut at the festival. This time the organisers did not invite a jury, there was no Grand Prix, but the festival became international for the first time after Lithuania regained its independence.
Until now, the venue in Birštonas has been open to all talented musicians: many young debutants and world-famous Lithuanian masters of jazz had their baptism by fire there.
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1 See the chapter "Jaunystė ’68".
2 Šaltenis, Liudas. "Birštono džiazo festivalių pamokos" (The Lessons of the Birštonas Jazz Festival), Kultūros barai, No 7, 1988, p. 18–20.
3 Šaltenis. "Birštono antrajame" (The Second Birštonas), Literatūra ir menas, 10 March 1982.
4 Ibid.
5 Šaltenis, Liudas. "Entuziastų šventėje" (A Feast for Enthusiasts), Literatūra ir menas, 14 January 1981.
6 Melodiya, C60 19021 006, 1983.
7 Šaltenis, Liudas. "Birštonas ’84", Literatūra ir menas, 14 March 1984.
8 In 1975, the Lithuanian State Conservatoire (now the Lithuanian Academy of Music and Theatre) in Vilnius and its faculty in Klaipėda, the Juozas Tallat-Kelpša Higher School of Music, and the Balys Dvarionas Children's Music School, opened departments of popular music where the basics of jazz were taught.
9 Šaltenis, Liudas. "Birštono džiazo festivalių pamokos" (The Lessons of the Birštonas Jazz Festival), Kultūros barai, No 7, 1988, p. 18–20.
10 Melodiya, C60 25005001, C6025057 004, 1987.
11 Sotnikov, Oleg. "Džiazo horizontalė ir vertikalė" (Vertical and Horizontal Jazz), Kultūros barai, No 7, 1988, p. 20–22.
12 Ibid.
13 Šaltenis, "Birštono džiazo festivalių pamokos" (The Lessons of the Birštonas Jazz Festival).
14 Melodiya, C60 27885 001, 1988; C60 27927 003, C60 27929 008, 1989.
15 Bandzaitė, Lina. "Ir vėl apie džiazą, ir vėl apie Birštoną" (Again about Jazz, and again about Birštonas), Respublika, 7 March 1990.
