Zagreb will host the 18th World Saxophone Congress on July 10-14, with the four-day event featuring more than 400 public performances of classical music by solo artists, bands, and orchestras featuring the saxophone as their central instrument.

Performances will involve over 1,500 musicians and will take place at several venues around the city, including the Music Academy, the Vatroslav Lisinski Concert Hall, the Croatian National Theatre (HNK), the Museum of Arts and Crafts (MUO), and the French Pavilion.

The opening ceremony, to take place at the Vatroslav Lisinski, will feature a concert by the state broadcaster HRT’s symphony orchestra, led by the famous French conductor Pierre-Andre Valade. Also performing will be world famous saxophone players Branford Marsalis, Arno Bornkamp, Claude Delangle, Timothy McAllister, and Antonio Garcia Jorge.

The congress will close with a large open-air concert at Zagreb’s Lake Bundek, which will star the Zagreb Philharmonic Orchestra led by another French conductor, Quentin Hindley, and by many solo artists from around the world, including Otis Murphy, Pawel Gusnar, Nobuya Sugawa, and Nikola Fabijanic.

The event will end with a spectacular concert performance featuring some 400 saxophone players. The World Saxophone Congress is held every three years in a different country, after the original event took place in America’s jazz capital Chicago in 1969.

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