Makaya McCraven, Joshua Redman, Uri Cane and Paolo Fresu among the headliners of the Vicenza Jazz Festival 2026

Thirty years of great international jazz in one of Italy's most beautiful art cities. An important milestone that ties in with the centenary of the birth of one of the greatest musicians of all time, Miles Davis. With an eye already on another fundamental anniversary, the hundredth birthday of another artist who changed the history of 20th-century music, John Coltrane. Within this threefold horizon moves the 30th edition of New Conversations – Vicenza Jazz, under the artistic direction of Riccardo Brazzale, which will run from 15 May through the night between 25 and 26 May, spanning the Teatro Olimpico – Palladio's masterpiece and a UNESCO World Heritage Site – the Teatro Comunale, the Cimitero Maggiore, the Basilica Palladiana, Villa Almerico Capra known as La Rotonda, and a series of other venues hosting performances and projects in the festival's now well-established format spread across the whole city. This year, for the first time, the festival will also reach the surrounding area marked by the industrial archaeology of the former CotoRossi.

Makaya McCraven, Barbara Hannigan with Bertrand Chamayou, Mary Halvorson, Uri Caine, Billy Cobham, Joshua Redman, Israel Galvan and Michael Leonhart, Paolo Fresu, Isaiah Collier, Lakecia Benjamin, Savina Yannatou & Primavera en Salonicco with Lamia Bedioui, Roberto Ottaviano with Robert Luft, Pietro Tonolo, Dimitri Espinoza, Neapolis Mantra, Enrico Rava and Fabrizio Bosso are the headliners and projects bringing to life more than 10 days of programming, featuring 4 Italian premieres, a special festival production, 3 multidisciplinary projects, a high-profile opening at the Teatro Olimpico dedicated to contemporary music, and a closing concert that promises to be a true celebration of jazz trumpet genius. There will also be performances in museums and the Olimpico Jazz Contest, not to mention, as has now become a festival tradition, the dawn concert and the midnight concert at the Cimitero Maggiore.

THE PREVIEW AND THE OPENING

The preview of Vicenza Jazz 2026, on May 15th at the Teatro Comunale, is entrusted to the baton of "beat scientist" Makaya McCraven, the Chicago drummer and producer who ranks among the most innovative and influential artists on the contemporary scene, skillfully blending jazz, hip-hop, soul, electronica and world music while holding past, present and future together. In doing so, he creates a layered, energy-rich "organic beat music", geared toward new frontiers and attentive to themes of identity, migration and cultural resistance.

On 16 May the festival arrives at the Teatro Olimpico for a truly grand opening: a concert by Canadian soprano and conductor Barbara Hannigan, with French pianist Bertrand Chamayou. Celebrated by the world's leading festivals and cultural institutions, Barbara Hannigan is a genuine force of nature: thanks to her unique and unquestionable expressive range, she is able to tackle pieces considered technically at the very limits of human possibility. For the festival she brings a programme that starts with the complex sonorities of Jumalattaret – a song cycle composed by the genius John Zorn for the extraordinary vocal abilities of the Canadian singer, inspired by the Finnish epic poem Kalevala – before moving on to works by, among others, Olivier Messiaen and Alexander Scriabin.

The following day, 17 May, the festival offers a double bill at the Teatro Olimpico, opening the evening with a live set from the quartet of American guitarist Mary Halvorson – an emerging talent already hailed by the specialist press – before welcoming another major name from the contemporary scene: American composer and pianist Uri Caine, in a solo piano concert.

Hannigan and Caine are just the first highlights of the Festival. Another headliner is undoubtedly a giant like American percussionist of Panamanian descent Billy Cobham, historically regarded as the most important drummer in jazz fusion, who on 18 May will perform at the Teatro Comunale, revisiting the finest moments of a career spanning more than 50 years, alongside a band featuring the equally celebrated Gary Husband on keyboards, Bjorn Arko on horns, Rocco Zifarelli on guitars and Victor Cisternas Soto on bass.

CELEBRATING MILES

In the main programme of Vicenza Jazz 2026, the focus on Miles Davis unfolds across several unmissable events, starting with the festival's special production bridging jazz and cinema, through the screening of a cult film with its soundtrack performed live: on May 21st at the Teatro Comunale Paolo Fresu, with his longstanding Italian quintet, will perform Ascensore per il Patibolo, the soundtrack to Louis Malle's noir masterpiece, composed in 1958 by the Prince of Darkness himself. "When I first heard the soundtrack to Ascensore per il Patibolo, I was literally struck" says Fresu. "Ascensore per il Patibolo and Kind of Blue are two works perfectly connected by a creative vision steeped in space, silence and interplay. In Vicenza, with the Italian Quintet celebrating its 42nd anniversary this year, we'll try to put all of that into music with respect and passion, so as to inhabit, one hundred years after Miles's birth, an unattainable masterpiece through music." On May 25th, again at the Teatro Comunale, a grand soirée alongside two other absolute masters of the trumpet who need no introduction: Enrico Rava and Fabrizio Bosso. Rava will take the stage with his latest project Fearless Five (album of the year and band of the year in the 2024 Top Jazz poll), a "fearless" quintet made up of a new generation of musicians – Evita Polidoro, Matteo Paggi, Francesco Ponticelli and Francesco Diodati – who bring young, creative energy together with the band leader's vast experience. "With this group – says Rava – I feel like I'm on an ideal island, where everyone gives and everyone receives what they need. There's tremendous freedom, but also mutual respect: everyone listens to everyone else, as in a perfect democracy that only jazz can represent." Right after, it will be Fabrizio Bosso's turn with his quartet, featuring Julian Oliver Mazzariello on piano, Jacopo Ferrazza on bass and Nicola Angelucci on drums, who will present compositions from their new album on this occasion. A long and thrilling jazz celebration that will run until midnight, just in time to blow out the candles for Miles, born in Alton, Illinois, on May 26, 1926.

FROM MILES TO COLTRANE

"We won't forget that this year also marks the centenary of John Coltrane's birth, and many important saxophonists will take part, both among the headline artists and the younger generation" comments Riccardo Brazzale about an edition that, although wrapping up a few months early, is already looking ahead to next September 23rd's anniversary. Plenty of room, then, for the great saxophonists too. Starting with the towering Joshua Redman, in concert on May 19th at the Teatro Comunale. Born in 1969 in Berkeley, California, son of the legendary Dewey Redman, he is considered one of the most charismatic jazz artists of recent decades. At the festival he will present Words Fall Short, his second album for Blue Note, released in 2025: a collection of original compositions marking the recording debut of his new quartet, with Paul Cornish on piano, Philip Norris on double bass and Nazir Ebo on drums.

On May 22nd the Ridotto of the Teatro Comunale hosts an unmissable double bill featuring two artists who, in different ways, have looked to the figure of Coltrane. The first to take the stage will be Isaiah Collier, composer, multi-instrumentalist, teacher and activist from Chicago's vibrant scene and a leading exponent of so-called "spiritual jazz". His 2021 album Cosmic Transitions was recorded at Rudy Van Gelder's legendary studio on Coltrane's birthday, using some of the same analogue equipment employed for the original recording session of A Love Supreme. Right after, the stage will come alive with the explosive fusion of jazz, R'n'B and funk of American artist Lakecia Benjamin, who in 2020 released an album titled Pursuance: The Coltranes, reinterpreting iconic tracks by John and Alice Coltrane, followed by Phoenix, a grand tribute both to her New York, risen from the pandemic like a phoenix, and to her own "resurrection" after miraculously surviving a car accident. A double metaphor that also aims to be a wish in the face of the disasters still befalling today's world. Hope for a better world is a theme that also returns in her new album, due out in June, titled We Dream, the dream of a bright future set against the darkness of the present.

A double saxophone bill also takes place the following day, May 23rd, again at the Ridotto of the Teatro Comunale. The evening opens with a performance by saxophonist Roberto Ottaviano – a key figure in Italian jazz who has written important chapters of the European scene – in duo with guitarist Rob Luft, a young British talent already boasting an international career, able to combine technique and creativity with a modern, elegant style. Next comes the live set by Pietro Tonolo, Venetian saxophonist and composer, among the most prominent figures in European jazz thanks to a long career studded with collaborations with international artists of the calibre of Lee Konitz, Dave Holland, Gil Evans, Paul Motian and Joe Chambers, to name just a few. Tonolo will perform with his new quartet featuring Giancarlo Bianchetti on guitar, Gabriele Evangelista on bass and Bernardo Guerra on drums.

DAWN AND NIGHT

The inspiration of A Love Supreme returns for the festival's traditional dawn concert. At sunrise on May 24th, in the gardens of Villa Almerico Capra known as La Rotonda – a building designed by Andrea Palladio and completed in 1605 by Vincenzo Scamozzi – saxophonist Dimitri Grechi Espinoza will pay tribute, with tenor sax, recorded tape and electronic effects, to Coltrane's masterpiece, retracing its movements Acknowledgement, Resolution, Pursuance and Psalm, preserving their deepest essence while at the same time exploring radically new sonic landscapes, between modal improvisation, Eastern mysticism and contemporary spirituality. A project that, in keeping with the spirit of openness and sharing typical of the Vicenza festival, marks a dialogue between Vicenza Jazz and the 2026 edition of the Festival Biblico. The concert will be introduced by sociologist Don Simone Zonato.

In the darkness of the night of May 22nd, meanwhile, singer Savina Yannatou will take centre stage at the now-historic concert at Vicenza's Cimitero Maggiore. With her band Primavera en Salonicco and a guest appearance by Tunisian singer Lamia Bedioui, Yannatou brings to the festival the songs from her latest album Waters Songs, her fifth for the prestigious ECM label. A record built around the theme of water and its many manifestations, travelling across geographies and historical eras, bringing Bedouin dialect together with European languages, and Greek Christmas carols blending into laments from Southern Italy. All under the sign of contamination and multiculturalism.

THE MULTIDISCIPLINARY PROJECTS

At the Festival, openness and sharing are watchwords that also apply to expressive and linguistic form. So Vicenza Jazz 2026 opens up live music to cross-pollination with a language such as contemporary dance, through two projects.

On May 20th at the Teatro Comunale, world-renowned Spanish choreographer Israel Galvan, an artist who has radically reinvented flamenco by carrying it into contemporary territory, meets talented New York trumpeter Michael Leonhart and his septet – well known for collaborations with artists such as Bill Frisell, Donny McCaslin and Elvis Costello – in the project New Sketches of Spain, loosely inspired by Miles Davis and Gil Evans's 1960 album Sketches of Spain. This special project is produced together with the Settimane musicali at the Teatro Olimpico.

Finally, on the evening of May 24th, as part of Danza in Rete Festival, the Teatro Comunale welcomes Neapolis Mantra, a multidisciplinary work conceived by Italian-African director and choreographer Mvula Sungani, bringing together on stage étoile Emanuela Bianchini, with the power of her physical dance, and the potent black voice of Enzo Gragnaniello.

A CITY-WIDE EVENT

Alongside all this, which makes up the dense and wide-ranging programme of New Conversations – Vicenza Jazz 2026, there is also a string of events scattered across the city's public spaces, from aperitivo hour until late at night: a multitude of smaller but very well-attended live shows taking place in bookshops, stores, restaurants, cafes and other venues in the city centre – events organised in partnership with Confcommercio Vicenza – that manage to give the city a joyful, cosmopolitan verve through the sounds, rhythms and colours of jazz.

Never before, in this thirtieth edition, has jazz sought so joyfully to blend with other music and other art forms, not just the performing arts. Once again proving right the reasoning behind UNESCO's founding of International Jazz Day: "Jazz is a tool for developing and enhancing intercultural dialogue and understanding between cultures for the purpose of mutual understanding and tolerance".

SCHEDULE

May 15 | PREVIEW NEW CONVERSATIONS – VICENZA JAZZ 2026

9 pm | Teatro Comunale – Sala del Ridotto

MAKAYA McCRAVEN QUARTET

May 16

9 pm | Teatro Olimpico

BARBARA HANNIGAN & BERTRAND CHAMAYOU – Jumalattaret by John Zorn for soprano and piano (and other music by Olivier Messiaen and Alexander Scriabin)

Italian Premiere

May 17

from 9 pm | Teatro Olimpico

• MARY HALVORSON QUARTET – Canis Major
• URI CAINE Piano solo

Italian Premiere

May 18

9 pm | Teatro Comunale – Sala Maggiore

BILLY COBHAM BAND

Italian Premiere

May 19

9 pm | Teatro Comunale – Sala Maggiore

JOSHUA REDMAN QUARTET

May 20

9 pm | Teatro Comunale – Sala Maggiore

ISRAEL GALVAN & MICHAEL LEONHART – NewSketches of Spain

May 21

9 pm | Teatro Comunale – Sala Maggiore

PAOLO FRESU QUINTET – Ascensore per il patibolo | a Vicenza Jazz 2026 production

May 22

from 9 pm | Teatro Comunale – Sala del Ridotto

ISAIAH COLLIER QUARTET

LAKECIA BENJAMIN We Dream

midnight | Cimitero Maggiore

SAVINA YANNATOU & PRIMAVERA EN SALONICCO feat. LAMIA BEDIOUI – Water Songs

Italian Premiere

May 23

from 9 pm | Teatro Comunale – Sala del Ridotto

• ROBERTO OTTAVIANO & ROBERT LUFT
• PIETRO TONOLO QUARTET

May 24

dawn | Villa Almerico Capra, known as La Rotonda

DIMITRI ESPINOZA – A Love Supreme

9 pm | Teatro Comunale – Sala Maggiore

NEAPOLIS MANTRA

May 25th

9 pm | Teatro Comunale – Sala Maggiore

ENRICO RAVA FEARLESS FIVE

FABRIZIO BOSSO QUARTET

From May 20th to 23rd

Happy Hour concerts at 7:00 pm

After Hour concerts at 10:30 pm

INFO & TICKETS

Teatro Comunale Box Office

tel. 0444 324442 – biglietteria@tcv.it

Online

www.tcvi.it – www.vicenzajazz.org

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