CAIRO: The Jazz Mania Festival kicked off to a good start on Saturday evening. The four-day festival, organized in cooperation with the Foreign Relations Council, the Cairo Opera House and the Supreme Council of Antiquities, is free to the public and located in a unique and scenic venue: the Salah el-Din Citadel. True to Cairene time, the program billed to begin at 7pm on Saturday, but started at around 8:30pm to a large audience. After various statements by the program's coordinators, the Jazzex Acapella Singers, hailing from the Ukraine, started the evening. Dressed in red and black, the group of three men and three women gave renditions of jazz classics, such as Sweet Georgia Brown, and pieces in Spanish and Ukrainian. An Egyptian group, the Pyramids Band, followed. The Pyramids Band is a classic four-piece jazz ensemble: piano, drums, contrabass, and saxophone. The band played a number of pieces composed by saxophonist Shady Ahmed, and also had a guest vocalist, Nesma Mahgoub, for a few numbers. Finally, jazz singer Michelle Rounds, all the way from Australia, closed the evening with a long set. While some of Michelle's antics on stage were a bit odd, the audience overall enjoyed her lively performance. The festival continued Sunday night with groups from Egypt, Cuba, and France. Monday night's lineup includes SweetSound Band from Egypt and Matthias Frey from Germany. Tuesday, the last night of the festival, will feature Sudaneel Band from Sudan, Cocoon Band from Egypt, and Ron Dziubia from the USA. All performances are free to the public and scheduled to begin at 7pm. There's plenty of space in the Citadel's open-air theater, but arrive a few minutes early if you want to find a good seat close to the stage. Also, while the program's coordinators have provided buses to move people from the entrance to the theater and back, it's worth skipping the bus and walking back to the entrance at the conclusion of the evening. Seeing the Citadel lit up at night is pretty impressive. BM
