Koktebel Jazz Party is a world-class festival and the world will come to recognize this soon, jazz trumpet player Valery Ponomaryov, a festival headliner, declared at a news conference. "I get the impression that someone did a lot of thinking about organizing the festival, about making both the musicians and the audience happy," Ponomaryov said.
The musicians who've come to the festival from around the world will tell their home audiences about this awesome music event so that it will get huge publicity, he believes. "Things are the way they are this year, but next time around it will be harder to drive down to Koktebel, and in two years, when they build a bridge [to Crimea], traffic will slow down to a crawl," Ponomaryov joked.
He also noted the high level of the performers: "So many bands played brilliantly — Andrei Kondakov and his band, Yakov Okun and his band, and Jeremy Pelt — amazing! All the participants are great, the selection is wonderful! The audience is delighted."