Jazz de Ría, five days of idyllic concerts and family activities on the Costa Ártabra

Moving away from the "macro" concept that is turning the Spanish festival scene into an obsessive race toward total homogenization, the Ría Jazz Festival presents an exciting program that brings five days of jazz to the Costa Ártabra to enjoy on the shores of the Atlantic. From Friday, August 15th to Tuesday, August 19th, different natural and heritage sites in Narón, Neda, Cedeira, and Valdoviño will host concerts by Galician and Spanish bands that explore every corner of the genre to demonstrate that jazz is, above all, a free form of music.

In its ninth edition, the festival consolidates a programming style that blends landscape with musical discoveries, with the goal of continuing to bring jazz music to all audiences, with the region as the main focus.

This jazz festival will kick off on Friday the 15th with one of the most respected jazz saxophonists and composers on the national scene, Valencian Perico Sambeat , who comes to Jazz de Ría to present his latest album, Roneando, in which he embarks on a sonic journey towards flamenco that demonstrates his ability to explore new paths by interweaving jazz with bulerías, tanguillos, alegrías and seguidillas, accompanied by an elite quintet made up of outstanding Spanish musicians.

Sumrrá , the band that embodies the most contemporary Galician jazz on stages around the world, is celebrating its 25th anniversary with a special concert in which they will invite important artists to take to the stage to revisit some of their most outstanding songs in a show that, in keeping with the very nature of the group, will leave no one indifferent. The jazz trio is made up of pianist Manuel Gutiérrez, double bassist Xacobe Martínez Antelo and drummer Lar Legido.

For its part, the jazz quintet led by the Vigo saxophonist Diego Alonso , comes to Jazz de Ría to surprise the public with the innovative sound and philosophical background of Nihil, their first album, together with Virxilio Da Silva on electric guitar, Xan Campos on piano, Pablo Patiño on double bass and Antón Quintela on drums.

Trilitrate 's restless and impossible-to-classify spirit will be the perfect sonic stimulus for one of the festival's most unique stages, the San Nicolás riverbank in Neda. The band visits the Ría Jazz Festival with their latest album, Está de Grelo! (It's Grelo!), a work in which they bring together musical geographies as distant as African and Ottoman, blurring the lines between traditional rhythms, classical melodies, ethnic music, contemporary music, jazz, and hardcore to achieve a unique universe, original and overflowing with beauty.

Another essential concert within Jazz de Ría will be that of the pianist from Cangas, Xan Campos , who after releasing five albums, participating in dozens of festivals in Europe and Latin America and collaborating with some of the most important figures in international jazz, takes a new musical turn in his clear desire to escape from the established presenting Amorodios, his most recent project alongside Faia Díaz, in which he connects with the Galician oral tradition. The band is completed by two fundamental musicians of Galician jazz: the drummer Iago Fernández and the guitarist and bassist Virxilio Da Silva.

Alba Armengou will present Blancos y Grafitos, her new album in which she joins guitarist Vicente López and percussionist and singer Tramel Levalle to fuse singer-songwriter music with Latin American folklore.

Likewise, the Coro da Ra, with 50 mixed voices directed by Ramón Bermejo, is ready to thrill the audience that comes to Parque dos Patos with a repertoire of vocal music covers ranging from the Beatles, the Beach Boys, and Queen, to Pink Floyd, Stevie Wonder, Frank Zappa, and Earth, Wind & Fire, as well as AC Jobim, Caetano Veloso, Chico Buarque, and Marisa Monte; but also including traditional Galician pieces, the great songs of Andrés do Barro, Fran Pérez "Narf," and Pepe Sendón, and even their own version of the Galician National Anthem.

The lineup is closed by Copos de Avena , which will fuse classic bolero retellings that pay homage to Cuba's rich heritage with bossa nova standards and compositions by artists such as Silvia Pérez Cruz, Natalia Lafourcade, Rita Payés and Jorge Drexler. The group, which includes vocalist Gloria Pavía from Santiago de Compostela, guitarist and composer Iago Marta from Vigo, drummer Héctor Agulla from Domaio and Cuban double bassist Yudith Almeida, refreshes this repertoire with a contemporary and unique perspective.

As every year, the Ría Jazz program is rounded out with workshops, musical tours and visits, and creative workshops focused on recycling and communication that promise surprises, all of which are free and open to the public, just like the concerts.

One of Ría Jazz's offerings is 'Baile na Ribeira' , a sonic exploration led by Fernando Fernández Rego that will immerse the audience in the days when a dance hall operated in Ribeira. The venue closed at the beginning of the 20th century, but the musical tour offers an exercise in imagination: What would dancing in Ribeira be like if the old hall had remained open until the 1970s? Los Zares, Los Sprinters, Los Players, Los Zafiros, and many other bands that emerged in Ferrolterra since the 1950s would surely have played there.

Another moment that will probably remain etched in the memory of those lucky enough to take part in the experience is the one proposed by the musician, Xurxo Souto, an exceptional guide on the Balcones al Atlántico route, who will take the public on foot from the lifeguard stand at Pantín Beach to Baleo, tracing a simple route through spectacular landscapes along cliffs and beaches that combines stretches of countryside with stretches of sand. Halfway there, at Castro do Rodo, an archaeological site steeped in great symbolic and scenic value, Xurxo Souto, in his dual role as musician and storyteller, will return to the memory of those old jazz orchestras that shaped the musical imagination of the region.

The Xuvia Industrial Mills Interpretation Center (CIMIX) will host a musical tour of what was once the most important flour mill of the 18th century; a journey into Narón's industrial past through the story of the entrepreneur Jean Lestache, a key figure in the development of the region during the Enlightenment. And among the mill machinery, the public will be able to enjoy the music of accordionist Fran Trashorras and saxophonist Ismael Cives, who will bring jazz melodies to popular music, in a perfect dialogue with the space and history.

Led by the Vigo-based collective Swing On, which was founded over a decade ago with the sole aim of celebrating jazz culture, creating spaces where people could enjoy dance and music with inclusivity and fighting against social inequalities, comes Vermouth Swing , an open lindy hop class open to all audiences and ages, fun and easy for those who already know how to dance a little and also for those who are moving their feet for the first time. Afterwards, for those who want to continue dancing or for those who prefer to listen to good music on the terrace of one of Xuvia's bars, there will be a session inspired by the nights of the Savoy Ballroom in Harlem in the 1930s, sprinkled with hot jazz, bebop, hard bop, and jump blues.

The Instrument Building Workshop , a workshop for children ages 4 to 12, will be taught by La Escola da Vaca, which will teach how to build instruments from recycled materials, which has become a staple of the Saturday afternoon at the festival. This school, based in Ferrol and with over 25 years dedicated to musical education, began holding these workshops a few years ago as a fun way to raise awareness about the amount of waste we generate. This year, they will be making a giant circular xylophone using water bottles of various sizes.

Pepe Cunha, director of Ábrete de Orellas , will lead a collaborative podcast workshop open to anyone interested in experimenting with communication and music reporting. This workshop is open to anyone interested in telling and listening to stories about jazz. You'll learn how to record, interview, and construct a collective narrative that captures the essence of the festival. This will then be published as a special Ría Jazz podcast. Ábrete de Orellas has twice won the Martín Códax Music Award for Best Music Communication Space.

Jazz de Ría is organized by Luneda Produciones and promoted by the Padroado da Cultura of the Narón Council, the Neda Council, the Cedeira Council and the Valdoviño Council, with the collaboration of the Deputation of A Coruña through the Cultural Network, and AIE (Artists en Ruta).