VILNIUS MAMA JAZZ 2026 | أحمد [Ahmed] | Vladimir Tarasov Octet: SATURN NOCTURNE

أحمد [Ahmed] (UK, SE, FR)

Pat Thomas – piano
Seymour Wright – aalto sax
Joel Grip – bass
Antonin Gerbal – drums

The 25th "Vilnius Mama Jazz" Jazz Festival will pay tribute to the visionaries of the 20th century alongside the most relevant voices in contemporary jazz. One of them is the American double bassist, oud (Arabic lute) master, composer, educator, and philosopher Ahmed Abdul Malik (1927–1993), who opened new horizons for jazz with his ideas.

On May 24, the international quartet Ahmed will interpret the work of this renowned American on the stage of the Lithuanian National Drama Theater (LNDT).

Malik’s contribution to jazz cannot be overstated. He is also considered one of the pioneers of world music, although he had perfectly mastered the traditional jazz stylistics of his generation.

For his debut album Jazz Sahara, released back in 1958, Malik recorded with a quartet featuring a very unusual lineup for those times: it featured the oud, the qanun (a zither-like string instrument common in the Middle East), the Egyptian cup-shaped darbuka drum, the tambourine, and a violin tuned to the Arabic system.

The album stunned the jazz world with its unusual timbres and sounds, microtonal shifts, and exotic solo improvisations. It was a revolutionary release that opened new paths for later jazz experimenters.

Malik ingeniously fused American, Arab, and North African influences into a vibrant, visionary form of jazz. His rhythmic, syncopated music, infused with the flavors of the Middle East and Africa, delves into unexpected depths of jazz history.

In 2015, a quartet calling itself أحمد [Ahmed] undertook the task of reviving the legacy of this original artist: Pat Thomas (piano, UK), Seymour Wright (alto saxophone, UK), Joel Grip (bass, Sweden), and Antonin Gerbal (drums, France).

According to the quartet’s pianist, Pat Thomas, Malik’s music changed his life. Therefore, at the suggestion of saxophonist S. Wright, he and his two colleagues embraced the idea of the Ahmed quartet and began to delve into the master’s legacy.

The quartet’s creative journey began with recordings in London and a performance at the Hagenfesten festival in Sweden, but it took several more years to find the key to conveying Ahmed’s unique style. This happened after concerts at the Bad Bonn festival in Switzerland and the Empty Gallery in Hong Kong.

“We felt we were creating something incredibly fresh and special. It was Ahmed Abdul Malik’s discoveries that shaped our musical universe,” said P. Thomas.

The group’s journey toward Malik’s visions is reflected in their albums New Jazz Imagination (2017), Super Majnoon (2019), and Nights on Saturn (2021). Today, the quartet expands the master’s legacy with their own ideas, breathing new life into it through masterful musicianship that creates a vibrant tapestry of sound, its depth and drive heating up to ecstasy.

The festival will offer a unique opportunity to experience the mysterious worlds of Ahmed and his muse live. “If you haven’t heard Malik’s music, you must hear it now,” asserts P. Thomas.

Vladimir Tarasov Octet: SATURN NOCTURNE (AT, GB/LT, LT, US)

Lauren Newton – voice
Andreas Schreiber – violin
Angelika Hagen – violin
Anton Lukoszevieze – cello
Gediminas Stepanavičius – double bass, electronics
Kristupas Gikas – flute, electronics
Arturas Bumšteinas – sound artist
Vladimiras Tarasovas – drums, percussion 

World-renowned drummer, original percussionist, composer, and visual artist Vladimir Tarasov never ceases to amaze with his experiments. He is one of those figures in improvisational music who needs no introduction, but who still needs to be talked about. Not because of his past achievements, which have already been recognized with the Lithuanian National Culture and Arts Prize, but because of his continued relevance.

In the 1970s, Vladimir Tarasov rose to fame with the trio GTČ, alongside Viacheslav Ganelin and Vladimir Chekasin. Thirty-five years ago, the percussionist founded the Lithuanian Art Orchestra, an ever-changing collective with which he has performed many times on the Vilnius Mama Jazz stage. This May, he returns once again to surprise the festival audience. With this year's international octet (according to the author himself, a double quartet), Vilnius Mama Jazz ambassador Vladimir Tarasov will give listeners another unforgettable experience – the world premiere of the visual audio performance Saturn Nocturne.

"A good friend of mine works at NASA and he sent me a sound that can be heard on Saturn. Of course, the sound has been processed by a computer, but it is the sound of Saturn," says Tarasov about the origins of the project.

The concert version of Saturn Nocturne continues the installation of the same name presented in 2020, transforming Tarasov's visual and audio explorations into a live ensemble performance. At the heart of the stage project is the ability to bring together artists from different backgrounds, generations, and disciplines into a shared space where there is no traditional hierarchy. Leadership here manifests itself in responsibility for form, direction, and ensuring that each sound finds its place in the overall fabric.

Tarasov invited Lauren Newton, a singer with an exceptional voice, to provide vocals for Saturn Nocturne. Their collaboration has continued for almost three decades, and their projects constantly transcend the boundaries of the concert form. Seventeen years ago, they presented the audiovisual project Tvanas in Vilnius, in which Newton played the role of Angel. In 2021, at the Babyn Yar Holocaust Memorial in Kyiv, on the 80th anniversary of the massacre, Vladimir Tarasov's trio (Lauren Newton, Mark Tokar, Vladimir Tarasov) performed a piece based on Chaim Nachman Bialik's text The Last. These are just a few examples that reveal the consonance and artistic depth of these artists.

For more than five decades, Lauren Newton has been developing a practice of wordless vocals that liberates the voice from its traditional sound and gives it an instrumental role. In this octet, her presence changes the very thinking of the ensemble – the voice becomes part of the structure rather than the emotion. Newton expands the possibilities of wordless vocals, while Tarasov's percussion instruments create multi-layered textures that allow the sound to transform and engage in dialogue with the listener. In their encounters, the music resembles a breathing system in which percussion and voice lose their distinct functions and begin to act as interrelated processes.

The octet assembled by Tarasov also features Austrian violinists Angelika Hagen and Andreas Schreiber, cellist Anton Lukoszevieze, who works in Lithuania and GB, and double bassist Gediminas Stepanavičius. Although they work in different countries, these musicians are renowned for their bold experiments at the intersection of improvisation, jazz, and new music, constantly transforming musical language in different cultural contexts. 

The electronic sound of the group is developed by creators of different generations: Artūras Bumšteinas, a sound artist well known to Lithuanian audiences, winner of the Golden Cross of the Stage award, and composer; and Kristupas Gikas, a doctoral student at the Lithuanian Academy of Music and Theatre, known for his unique style, using turntables, unusual wind instruments, and other objects in his performances. The electro-acoustic textures created by these experimental musicians subtly expand the ensemble's spectrum.

This complex structure is held together by Tarasov's axis. His percussion is not a traditional rhythmic center here, but rather a gravitational field around which other sounds form. This is complemented by visual elements – video, a sense of space, and performativity. In the artist's work, sound does not exist in isolation – music becomes a visible process in time and space.

Saturn Nocturne at the Vilnius Mama Jazz festival sounds like a natural continuation of dialogue. Vladimir Tarasov's long-standing connection with the audience takes on a new form each time. This time, it is a night when Saturn's orbit becomes a trajectory of listening.

The festival is funded by the Lithuanian Council for Culture and Vilnius City Municipality.