His belief in the human spirit Jose James has been sharing in his albums and concerts, in his projects that made him stand out as one of the most significant, influential and respected jazz musicians of our time. “It’s an exciting time to be a musician,” says Jose James on a Jazz FM interview. He underlined the role of the greatest jazz personalities from the past who, through their art, paved the way for the development of society and opened horizons for freedom of artistic expression. One of them is Billie Holiday to whom he dedicated his album Yesterday I Had The Blues - it was released this spring to celebrate the centennial of her birth. “For me her music is a symbol of how to be a strong person in modern life, how to navigate these new challenges that never existed before,” said Jose James on the eve of his concert at the A to JazZ festival in Sofia. You can listen to the interview by Jazz FM’s Tanya Ivanova and Svetoslav Nikolov using the Audio button above. Roy Hargrove and Kenny Garrett are the other two festival headliners this year. Jazz FM is a media partner.
