A one-night-only jam session by Europe’s finest jazz musicians, featuring 16 musicians, representing 15 EU Member Countries:

Austria: Herbert Grubmair – tenor saxophone
Czech Republic: Martin Zbrožek – violin
Czech Republic: Jaromir Honzak – double bass
Cyprus: Glafkos Kontemeniotis – piano
Germany: Christian Torkewitz – saxophone
Greece: Spiros Exaras – guitar
France: Dan Tepfer – piano
Italy: Marco Di Gennaro – piano
Latvia: Ilona Kudina – flute
Luxemburg: Martin Reuter – drums
The Netherlands: Marc Mommaas – saxophone
Romania: Lucian Ban – piano
Slovakia: Laco Deczi – trumpet
Slovenia: Lenart Krečič – saxophone
Sweden: Per Byman – trumpet

Beginning in January, the Czech Republic will take on the presidency of the European Union. To celebrate this landmark event, the Czech Center in colaboration with the Czech UN Mission invited all of the other EU members in New York to nominate a musician and to take part in a special jazz concert at the newly restored Bohemian National Hall in Manhattan. What’s more, to showcase the talents of the musicians performing, there will be no rehearsals—they’ll just walk in and play without ever having met!

With the support of Romanian Cultural Institute in New York and in collaboration with the Romanian UN Mission, pianist Lucian Ban will perform at this "January Jam" celebrating not only the vitality of European jazz in the 21st century, but also the creative and resourceful spirit of Europeans in general.

[Image: Lucian Ban in the kick off concert of the US Tour promoting The Romanian-American Jazz Suite at The Jazz Standard, NYC, on July 1, 2008 - photo by Will Gray]