Dan Pugach is coming to Skopje with a Grammy in hand. The American-Israeli drummer and arranger won the award for best large jazz ensemble album with "Bianca Reimagined: Music for Paws and Persistence", and on October 7 he plays at the National Opera and Ballet with the National Jazz Orchestra of Macedonia, conducted by Dijan Emin.

The story behind that album is not the usual Grammy story. Pugach adopted a pit bull named Bianca in 2011, the dog died in 2018, and the entire big band record was written out of that loss and out of his work with shelters for abandoned animals. It is rare for the biggest prize in American music to land on a record whose subject is rescuing dogs. Pugach is also the drummer on "How Love Begins", another Grammy winner, recorded with Christian McBride.

Two guests come with him. Nicole Zuraitis sings - she has a Grammy of her own for a vocal jazz album and is Pugach's wife, so the duo that works both as a marriage and as music on the record steps out on stage together here. Jonathan Saraga is on trumpet. The programme mixes Pugach's own compositions with contemporary arrangements of American jazz standards, played by the full National Jazz Orchestra line-up.

This is the kind of event Skopje gets once a season and that usually slips by unnoticed, because there is no advertising campaign behind it. Tickets are 1,000 denars through karti.com.mk and mktickets.mk, and the concert starts at 20:00 at the National Opera and Ballet. That is roughly the price of two pizzas - for an orchestra of around twenty people and three guests carrying two Grammys between them.