The name of the second group comes from the rare West African instrument called kora. The African born trio (African drums, kora and keyboards) plays a fusion of the sounds of Africa with classical American jazz. The musicians say that their music is based on pleasure – pleasure from the music, from the instruments, from the dialogue with the audience, and the dialogue between Africa and Europe.

“Jazz brings its certain message. We played African music tonight, and we wanted to share it with the people who came to listen to it,” says the pianist Abdoulaye Diabate.

The program will continue at Moscow’s Mir concert hall on April 11th, and the next day in St.Petersburg at the Music Hall.

The clarinetist Michel Portal and pianist Jacky Terrasson will be the next to hit the concert halls of both capitals at the festival.

Steffano Di Battista, the Italian saxophonist and vocalist of the jazz label 'Blue Note,' will be closing the concert program of LeJazz. He has made a major part of all his recordings in France, so the French consider it their duty to support his and his quartet’s performances.

ArtMania and the French Cultural Centre and the Embassy of France in Moscow initiated holding this festival in 2005. The festival is dedicated to the popularization of French jazz in Russia.

Within five years, the traditional spring festival managed to find its public. “Despite the storming [financial] crisis, we still managed to make a very good program for this year and… Earlier we only used clubs as venues for our concerts, and now we attract enough visitors to fill concert halls,” Semushkina adds.