“One of the most creative large jazz ensembles in Europe” (JazzTimes, 2019), the Nikolov-Ivanović Undectet, will hold a concert promotion of the new album “Dystopia” on Monday, December 11 from 8 p.m. in the Amerikana hall, Youth Cultural Center in Belgrade, Serbia. Tickets, priced at RSD 1,200, are on sale through the eFinity system.
Nikolov-Ivanović Undectet is a hybrid ensemble that combines the talents of Vladimir Nikolov and Srđan Ivanović with nine top musicians from several European countries. The ensemble includes 7 wind instruments (trumpet, horn, trombone, tuba, alto, tenor, baritone saxophone with substitutions on flute, clarinet, bass clarinet and soprano saxophone), accordion, piano, bass and drums.
“Dystopia” is the third album of Nikolov-Ivanović Undectet. This project brings to the audience 10 new compositions, created in the pandemic and post-pandemic period. The core of the author’s material was created during the days of isolation, as two pieces: “Dystopia” and “Scream”, which express a protest against the dystopian way of life through the expression of a musical “scream”. After the creation of this basic material, which served as a creative base, the new pieces opened up other themes as well as space for musical research.
In creating the new album, the Undectet got new members: Sébastien Llado on trombone, Olivier Laisney on trumpet, Léo Guedy on baritone saxophone and bass clarinet. Besides them, from the old line-up there are Luka Ignjatović on alto saxophone and flute, Kristijan Mlačak on tenor and soprano saxophone, Miloš Budimirov on tuba, Noé Clerc on accordion and accordina, Mihail Ivanov on double bass, Srđan Ivanovic on drums and Vladimir Nikolov on the piano.
The Nikolov-Ivanović Undectet was formed in 2017 and immediately attracted a lot of attention from the audience and the international jazz community with its first album “Artistry in Broken Rhythm”. For the debut release, they found initial inspiration in the works of Stan Kenton and Miles Davis, building on those impulses modern orchestrated music of high intensity and deep emotions, in the colors and rhythms of various continents, from New York to the Balkans. The seeds of the project were sown in the middle of the last decade in the Netherlands, where Nikolov and Ivanović studied, and Vladimir Nikolov’s title track “Artistry in Broken Rhythm” received an award at the Silesian Jazz Festival in Katowice in 2016.
They released their second album “Frame and Curiosity” in 2019, and successfully premiered it at the opening of the 35th Belgrade Jazz Festival. On that occasion, their special guest was the French flutist Magic Malik. The respected jazz magazine JazzTimes, in its review of their second album, which erases genre boundaries and opens up new creative possibilities in music creation, called the Nikolov-Ivanović Undectet a revolutionary ensemble.
They have performed numerous times and won an award at the “Made in New York Jazz Competition”.