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Punta del Este International Jazz Festival - January 6-10, 2016

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Add the excellent sound, a respectful and responsive audience, and efficient festival staff, a great post-concert dinner hangs at the restaurant and complimentary champagne between concert sets and you get an annual event just waiting to be discovered by the wider jazz audience. --Bob Blumenthal, JazzTimes
“Do small things with great love."—Francisco Yobino, Punta del Este International Jazz Festival Director

By Maria Cabeza

Francisco Yobino was a pioneer; when he started thinking of making a jazz festival in Punta del Este (Uruguay) people told him he was nuts: “ In the middle of the countryside?" “ Surrounded by cows?" “ You should try this project in Europe or in the USA!" but he stayed in Uruguay and it has been 20 years since his dream came true.

Today, Francisco´s non-profitable Cultural Proposal is on the world´s jazz map. Every year, during four days, El Sosiego farm opens its heart to state-of-the-art musicians, to between 70 and 100 students—to whom Francisco gives financial support to study and meet these terrific musicians and, to a faithful audience whose hunger for sharing the most popular posh music of the United States of America in a wild environment full of love and care brings them from every corner of the world.

When the music vanishes and the curtains are drawn, this man, the Punta del Este International Jazz Mentor, Director and Producer does not go to rest. On the contrary, he phones Paquito D´Rivera, his friend and Musical Director of the festival, to start thinking about the next year's lineup and preparations. Paquito calls him “ Don Quijote of the farm," I like to call him “Fitz Carraldo". Francisco is a dreamer, a tenacious believer that things can be done; he says “ Do small things with great love".

The Punta del Este International Jazz Festival was the first jazz festival in South America and it is nowadays the most prestigious one. It has influenced other countries such as Argentina, Chile, Paraguay and Brazil who, at present and happily, have their own festivals.

The festival has hosted worldwide outstanding expert-acknowledged musicians and it has been declared of NATIONAL INTEREST by the Uruguayan Government. It also counts with the support of the United States Embassy, the UNESCO and the Brazilian Embassy. There have been hard times when sponsors financial support helped lots but was not enough but, nevertheless, Francisco knows, by instinct, how to turn stone into gold so the impossible only took him a little more time.

Yobino was born to GIVE, he has a gift for picking up the best musicians, select the right spot, mount a tremendous scenery in the wild for the performance. In return he receives no money but something more valuable: during the first 19 years it never rained once (the performance is held in the open air), God sent him sunny days and moonlight nights.

Reporter Bob Blumenthal of JazzTimes wrote: “ Add the excellent sound, a respectful and responsive audience, and efficient festival staff, a great post-concert dinner hangs at the restaurant and complimentary champagne between concert sets and you get an annual event just waiting to be discovered by the wider jazz audience".

Francisco is used to dreaming impossible dreams and he is proficient at avoiding hurdles and just keep on trying hard to achieve his goals. He enriched the region with this Cultural Proposal and, like if it were under a spell, Punta del Este became a worldwide noticeable shop window since 1996.

In 2003, Yann Arthus-Bertrand, with Sybille d´Orgeval and Baptiste Rouget-Luchaire, launched seven-billion other projects; 6,000 interviews were filmed in 84 countries. They asked forty-five questions that helped us, human beings, to find out what separates and what unites a Brazilian fisherman to a Chinese shopkeeper, from a German performer to an Afghan farmer. One of the words that came up was the capacity to adapt to changes. As in the example above (I recommend the research, personally), jazz specialists say that jazz musicians have this capacity and, what is more, they are able to improvise.

Moreover, that they are the only ones who can actually play all kinds of music. Like in seven-million other projects, the Punta del Este International Jazz Festival joins these musicians from different parts of the world and cultures and this encounter sums up in an umbrella word: freedom. People are born free, must die free and music is a means of walking toward it or maintaining it.

As a writer I do my job with all my senses, there is no intention when I write; I just let my hand do the job, it slides the pen on the paper and there is magic there too. Writers are suggested to try different ways of putting things in black and white: write on your PC, at a bar, hand-write, use a pen, a paintbrush, stay at home, go to the garden, be seated, stand up, write naked, and so forth. In other words: experience, try new things, scramble the old ones, make new recipes and most of all show but do not tell.

JAZZ IS THE ART OF THE INVISIBLE.

At the festival, musicians feel at ease, they lack the weight of huge, though fantastic, shows where they have not even time for small talk with their peers. At El Sosiego farm they are free to walk along the green fields, to play music with a friend, to have a drink at the “pulpería" after the show and stay until late with their friends.

Francisco Yobino, himself, welcomes the musicians at the airport and he would be there again when their planes take off. He is a gentleman and the best host; that is the reason why musicians keep coming year after year, to be cherished and have a pleasant time. I can assure you that, coming to the Punta del Este Jazz Festival at El Sosiego farm, is a life time experience. The pilgrimage is worth the while.

I am blessed to have met Francisco and to have been learning from him, step by step, day by day. My dark side of the moon found comfort in “Softly as in a Morning Sunrise," “ You and the Night and the Music" and “You´d be So Nice To Come Home To". Feel music with all your body, mind and soul, learn to listen; music speaks where words fail.

This year (2016) the Punta del Este International Jazz Festival is celebrating its 20th Anniversary. Francisco is sharing jazz music with his faithful audience, presenting a prestigious lineup which includes: Paquito D’Rivera (Music Director), Diego Urcola, Mike Rodriguez (2016 Grammy Award Nominee), Grant Stewart, Lewis Nash, Makoto Ozone, Harold Mabern, Pipi Piazzola, Helen Sung, Manuel Valera and more. Last but not least, I dare say these final words: Pray for men like Francisco, they surely work hard to make a better world.

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