Entitled Victor Young Jazz Festival, the event brings together domestic acts such as the Trio of Kuba Stankiewicz, a leading Polish jazz pianist, composer and arranger, vocalist Grażyna Auguścik and the Warsaw Dance Combo.
In addition to concerts, the two-day festival includes workshops for young musicians, an exhibition on Victor Young’s life and career, and a panel discussion on the music scene of the 1920s and '30s.
Born in Chicago in 1899 into a musical Jewish family with Polish roots, Young had a difficult childhood. After his mother died, his father abandoned the family and Victor was sent to Poland at the age of 10 to stay with his grandfather.
It was then that he lived for some time in Mława, before enrolling at the Warsaw Conservatory, where he studied piano, violin and composition.
He returned to Chicago in 1920 and developed a career as a violinist and subsequently as a composer. In the mid-1930s, he moved to Hollywood, where he concentrated on films and recordings of light music.
He wrote music to about 300 movies, receiving 22 Oscar nominations for his soundtracks. His only Oscar was granted to him posthumously for his score for Around the World in Eighty Days in 1956, the year of his death.
Young’s other nominated scores included For Whom the Bell Tolls, September Affair, and The Quiet Man.
Vicki Fromberg Davis, Victor Young’s niece, has told the Mława Town Council's website that she is honoured to see how he is remembered in a place that is so dear to their family.
She also said she was proud of her “Mława roots.” She visited the town in 2017.
(mk/gs)