JetLAG - annual open-air music festival

JetЛАГ / JetLAG is an annual open-air music festival that highlights traditional and contemporary trends in music, poetry and performance art. JetЛАГ discovers, establishes and maintains links between groups of different cultures, generations and tastes.

The festival contextualizes and explores genres, styles and projects that embody such links, such as Russian guitar-poetry and folk song, rock, klezmer, gypsy music, trance, rap and freestyle poetry.

Each year, these different styles will be united by a certain historically relevant common theme, such as "The 1960s," French chanson, German cabaret, Yiddish theater, Light Music Orchestras, etc.

JetЛАГ was founded in 2009 as a Russian-American Festival; however it has grown into a more diverse event, where different groups are bonding at the initiative of one community and sharing views, tastes and relevant information.

The name JetЛАГ is originally an English-Russian pun (JetLAG, where "lag" means "camp," because establishing a common campground for both artists and the audience is traditional for Russian rock and folk festivals).

JetЛАГ is a great source for those engaged in cultural studies, social anthropology, history, politics, contemporary art and performance studies, ethnomusicology, and Russian, Slavic & East European studies.

JetЛАГ is designed for artists, musicians, music enthusiasts, and significantly, students; we encourage professors of Russian language and/or the arts to consult us about bringing groups of students to the festival as part of their summer school program's curricula.

We have established strong contacts with a number of universities in the area (including NYU, Dartmouth College, University of Michigan, University of Pennsylvania, etc.) and plan to further increase these links.

The festival's headliners and guest list include internationally known musicians from Russia as well as legendary American musicians. (For example, Frank London, the world-renowned trumpeter, composer and bandleader ['Klezmatics', 'Brotherhood of Grass'], and Leonid Fëdorov, of the legendary Russian rock band ‘Auktsion’ were guests of JetЛАГ-2009.)

At the culmination of the festival, the headliners meet local musicians and convene a jam-session on stage.

The next festival (JetЛАГ-2010) will be dedicated to French chanson and its influences on Russian folk song as well as its role in European and world culture. The headliners are well-known musicians who tend to re-imagine and re-invent this heritage in their performances.

All special guests of JetЛАГ are famous for their ability to take active part in jam-sessions, to be 'in the middle' of the event and to generously share their experience with beginners.

In addition to the main concert, several stages will run concurrent programs throughout all three days of the festival. These stages represent the theme of the festival in different styles and from different angles. Each of these stages is run by a musician who is regarded as a legendary figure within a certain musical sphere. These musicians generate their own programs, invite guests and essentially create a mini-festival within the greater JetЛАГ framework.

We believe that JetLAG attendees will experience one of the most vibrant music festivals in the Northeast, and one of the most important displays of Russian-American culture in the world.