Back in the (Former) U.S.S.R.
This writer has always disliked first-person criticism. Readers don’t care about a writer’s subjective experience of art. The Leopolis Jazz Fest, however, has put me in a singular position—one that even I can’t generalize.
The past 15 months of watching concerts on Zoom would likely have rendered any live, in-person festival incerta terra. I want to acknowledge that before I state for the record that the 2021 Leopolis Jazz Fest—held in the Ukrainian city of Lviv, whose historical Latin name is Leopolis—was both my first jazz festival since the COVID-19 pandemic and the strangest I have ever encountered.
