Umbria Jazz 2025

Our Umbria Jazz begins at Teatro Morlacchi, one of the festival's historic venues, a heaven on earth for the most purist devotees of the event and for lovers of the genre. On stage is a young man born in '98, Isaiah Collier, born in the Windy City and now on tour to spread a bit of his jazz across the Italian peninsula as well. With him are the Chosen Few: piano, double bass and drums. That they're as good as they are few becomes clear after just a few minutes of the show. What stands out above all is pianist Liya Grigoryan, understated and unassuming, yet endowed with an overflowing, crystalline talent. She sits with her back to the audience, to Collier's right, while he, standing at his towering six-foot-three, keeps not only the requisite horns but also assorted objects and trinkets within reach, to be used as needed to generate sound insertsto weave into the waves of his “cosmic” jazz, somewhere between Sun Ra and Coltrane. But Collier's music is anything but traditional, as indecipherable as it is hard to pin down into precise definitions or watertight categories. What is certain, however, is that part of his art stems from anger, from protest against a world steeped in violence and discrimination. The American anthem that opens one of the tracks in his set – mostly drawn from his latest album, “The World Is On Fire” (2024) – almost seems to mock today's United States with cacophonous digressions verging on the grotesque. Just as Hendrix did at Woodstock in 1969, Collier uses the notes of his saxophone to depict a distorted, almost dystopian state, with its exuberant and overbearing political dynamics. After about an hour and a half of music, and one final encore granted to the audience of the atmospheric – and nearly packed – Teatro Morlacchi, as the last light of the sun fades, Arena Santa Giuliana also opens its gates to the public, this year a day later than usual, due to the – almost last-minute – withdrawal of Sacred Soul.

On the Santa Giuliana stage, with a view of the crowd and the iconic bell tower of the old monastery, Stefano Bollani – by now a regular guest of the Perugia festival – performs his gypsy and South American jazz. This time he's joined by the excellent Steve Ballard on drums and Larry Grenadier on bass (last year on the same stage with the Brad Mehldau Trio), Mauro Refosco on percussion and Vincent Peirani on accordion. It's the latter, resolutely barefoot, who draws the loudest applause of the evening with flights of fancy and gypsy-flavored digressions, which he alternates with sublime mastery between the frenzy of a dancing caravan and the intimacy of a hushed moment, during which, beyond the music of the accordion, you can even hear the sound of fingers moving over the keys, like the patter of rain on glass or lips touching to utter a whispered phrase. The honor of closing the first Santa Giuliana show falls to Patagarri, who warm up the crowd by calling them right up to the stage just minutes into the show. The irony of their stories, ritually introduced by a speech from Francesco Parazzoli, turns into music colored by Balkan and, once again, gypsy hues, especially thanks to the horn work of Giovanni and Arturo Monaco. The finale also leaves room for a few classics, above all “Bella Ciao”, “Il cielo in una stanza” and the traditional “St. James Infirmary”.

The following day, some fear the worst. The threat of rain looms over the Arena well into the afternoon, but fortunately, as forecast, it only breaks a couple of hours before Dianne Reeves takes the Santa Giuliana stage, which is practically sold out across its 3,000 seats between the floor and the stands. It falls to the talented singer from Detroit to introduce one of the most anticipated shows of the festival, that of Herbie Hancock. “Before him,” said Miles Davis, “there were Bud Powell and Thelonious Monk; after him, I still haven't seen anyone arrive.” But you don't need to invoke jazz's “sacred” names to understand how much the Chicago artist has added to the genre. He takes the Santa Giuliana stage in blue trousers and a white-and-red shirt, alternating between a Korg Kronos synth and a Fazioli piano, pulsing vehicles driving a fluid journey between close yet different planets: jazz, fusion, funk, electronic music, even metal when it's time to push things with some distortion. At one point in the show, indeed, the guitar monologue of Beninese musician Lionel Loueke – who, in Hancock's own words, “seems to be equipped with three brains instead of one” – suddenly turns into a driving, aggressive piece into which the Maestro, now eighty-five, slips and blends without the slightest effort. Beyond Loueke's fingerpicking on the six strings, honorable mention goes to the very young Jaylen Petinaud, born in '98, round-faced and sporting his Yankees cap. “He could be my grandson,” Hancock says during the show, “but he's the generation of jazz's future,” and watching him in action, it's truly hard not to believe him.

With Herbie Hancock's show, the first weekend of Umbria Jazz also comes to a close, and the start of the week, thanks to kind weather, lets us enjoy the uplifting soul of Gregory Porter, caressed by a pleasant summer breeze. The Californian artist is no stranger to Perugia and always seems genuinely happy to return to Umbria. After a masterful opening set by Samara Joy, herself particularly tied to Umbria Jazz, the baritone from Sacramento fills the air with soul, jazz, blues and gospel, marked by his unmistakable timbre and that inseparable balaclava, which has by now become his unique, distinctive trademark. Particularly moving were the performances of “Hey Laura”, met with special acclaim by the Santa Giuliana crowd, and “Take Me To The Alley”, the tale of a kind-hearted king who, despite the warm welcome of his people, lets himself be led toward the forgotten corners of his kingdom: the squalid, filthy outskirts of outcasts and the desperate. “Rest here in my garden,” Porter sings in his deep voice, “You will have a pardon,” a message that, in this historical moment, seems to come from another solar system entirely.

Our return to Santa Giuliana, two days later, is for a highly anticipated show – but one that industry insiders also viewed with particular dread. The performance by Joe Satriani and Steve Vai is inevitably a "risky", abrasive and niche affair, not only because of the artistry the two guitar heroes express, but also, and above all, because of their approach to performance itself. From then on, for this fifty-second edition, Umbria Jazz would open the doors of Santa Giuliana to the crowd-pleasing funk of Marcus Miller, the melodic jazz of Kamasi Washington and the pop of Jacob Collier, Mika and Lionel Richie: a walk in the park compared to the SatchVai show, a pairing that harks back to the glory days of G3. Technical prowess is, without a doubt, a defining trait of the two American guitarists' style, and this could weigh heavily on anyone without a particular ear for the instrument's dynamics. Even though the show was conceived to showcase both guitarists' hits, the result proves polarizing from the very first songs in the set. Those who had bought platea tickets purely as a fashion statement or to flaunt a certain social status – a fairly widespread tendency in the Perugia crowd – were especially overwhelmed by such explosive, hyper-technical music. After an opening devoted exclusively to the SatchVai project, with Marco Mendoza on vocals as well as bass, the show brings the boundless talents of Vai and Satriani to the fore. Needless to say, the performances of their respective hits are stunning: "Flying In A Blue Dream" and "Surfing With The Alien" for the former, "Tender Surrender" and "For The Love Of God" for the latter, none of which seem to have lost anything despite the passing of time and the years advancing without a hint of mercy. On the surface, sure, Satriani – ever drawn to alien, spacey settings – looks like he's aged, as does Vai – forever steeped in remote cultures and Eastern atmospheres – but their technique on the instrument is not affected in the slightest, so much so that the two Long Islanders seem to have found, at least musically speaking, the secret to eternal life. Although the music invites people to break ranks and rush the stage, the true devotees – often recognizable by their eccentric haircuts or t-shirts from past tours – respect the imposed distances and only claim the first few rows near the end of the show, when the ritual of two of the most influential guitarists in the instrument's history dissolves into "Born To Be Wild" by Steppenwolf, whose lyrics stand as a kind of manifesto forcefully nailed to the careers and lives of two musicians who – like it or not – have left an indelible mark on music: "We can climb so high, I never wanna die".

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