Živa Voda Festival at Vintage Industrial in Zagreb on October 15 - Skopje-born Vladimir Nikolov, arranger for Jacob Collier and Chaka Khan, leads a special orchestra

The third edition of the Živa Voda Festival takes place on October 15 at Zagreb's Vintage Industrial club, and the headline act carries a Macedonian signature. The specially assembled Živa Voda Orchestra performs with composers Vladimir Nikolov and Srđan Ivanović. Alongside them are Kača i n/Obe and the instrumental outfit Doringo, plus guests the organisers haven't announced yet. Doors open at 20:00.

Nikolov was born in Skopje in 1979. He started on classical guitar and studied jazz composition and arranging at the Amsterdam Conservatory, earning his master's in 2005. As an arranger he has worked with the Metropole Orkest, the Brussels Philharmonic and the BBC Radio orchestra, as well as with Jacob Collier, Chaka Khan and Randy Brecker. He has also done orchestrations for films, among them the Oscar-winning "The Artist". Since 2018 he has headed the Jazz Department at the Faculty of Music in Belgrade. How many Macedonians even know that one of their own is behind the arrangements for a list of names like that?

Ivanović was born in Sarajevo in 1983, spent his childhood in Greece and studied in Amsterdam and Utrecht. He won the Dutch jazz competition held as part of the North Sea Jazz festival and leads his own group, the Blazin' Quartet. Together the two founded the Nikolov-Ivanović Undectet, with which they have released several albums. Today Ivanović lives in Paris. Živa Voda, for its part, is a collective and association of musicians from Zagreb's post-genre scene, with members of several well-known alternative bands.

The rest of the bill is just as unconventional. Kača i n/Obe is a new project blending mythology, electronics and opera, premiering new material at the festival. Doringo is a Zagreb instrumental band led by guitarist and producer Dinko Čvorić, founded in 2016, mixing progressive rock, world music, jazz and ethno. Presale tickets cost 20 euros (about 1,230 denars) on entrio.hr, or 25 euros on the day.