
MIA ŽNIDARIČ QUINTET – Z DOTIKOM/WITH FEELING (Slovenia, USA)
Mia Žnidarič, vocals
Peter Ugrin, violin
Steve Klink, piano
David Jarh, trumpet
Robert Jukič, double bass
Mia Žnidarič has released her first single Zabavaj se (“Enjoy Yourself”) and with it announced her new album Z dotikom (“With Feeling”), which she will be presenting on our Jazz stage together with a group of renowned musicians, also celebrating the thirtieth anniversary of her career.
Mrs Žnidarič is one of the first jazz singers in Slovenia. She took a wide array of jazz standards and had them translated into Slovene; she brought a vibrant American song tradition and swing rhythms to Slovenes, some of whom previously not very familiar with jazz. Later she started connecting the poetry of famous Slovene poets with the so-called American folk music. Since then she has been performing at countless concerts, tirelessly recording and collaborating with various smaller and larger ensembles, string orchestras and many internationally renowned musicians. She has recorded four CDs with jazz standards and four CDs with Slovene poetry and earned five Slovene Golden Rooster awards.
This is Mia Žnidarič’s fourteenth record. It combines all the diversity of the singer’s musical path. Through eleven songs, composed by Steve Klink to accompany the poetry of Feri Lainšček and Svetlana Makarovič, regardless of language or style, the same thread leads us: Mia’s voice. Her way of jazz singing bears traces of Ella Fitzgerald, in her folk melodies we find echoes of Joni Mitchell, when she sings swing, we can hear her characteristic smile and her refreshing, mischievous and playful ease, and on the other hand – for example in the Slovene folk song Zrelo je žito (“The wheat is ripe”) – she can wrap us in the dark, almost desperate tragedy of lost love.
Free admission.