IT HAS BEEN A YEAR SINCE MY PIECE “ON THE ROAD AGAIN: A JAZZ FESTIVAL JOURNAL FROM A SUMMER OF PLAGUE AND WAR” APPEARED, IN THE NOVEMBER 2022 ISSUE OF THIS MAGAZINE. IT DESCRIBED THREE EUROPEAN JAZZ FESTIVALS I ATTENDED IN JULY 2022.
In July 2023, I returned to Europe to attend two festivals. The COVID-19 plague and its fallout had significantly subsided. The war in Ukraine was still raging, but this time I didn’t get near it. In 2022, I went to a festival in Romania, which borders Ukraine. In 2023, I only went to Italy.
Like the year before, my first 2023 stop was the Südtirol Jazz Festival. It is based in Bolzano but extends beyond it to other sites in the northernmost province of Italy, bordering Austria. It is a region most tourists, in their pilgrimages to Rome, Florence, and Venice, never see. It is one of the most beautiful places on earth. The Südtirol festival deeply integrates its music into its extraordinary physical environment. Concerts are often set on the cliffs and in the valleys of two mountain ranges. Crumbling castles and terraced vineyards cling to the sheer sides of the emerald green Italian Alps. The silver Dolomites, with their jagged massifs, tower even higher in the sky. Sometimes reaching the music requires two cable car rides.
The Südtirol festival started small in 1982. It now lasts for 10 days. In 2023, the festival presented 90 concerts by 150 artists in 50 locations. But it feels intimate. Most sites hold small audiences that sit close to the music. Famous artists rarely play there. Südtirol books emerging musicians who push the jazz envelope. You don’t go to Bolzano for bebop. You go there to immerse yourself in experimentation and rule-breaking. You go there knowing that some new synapses will fire in your brain.
A quintessential example started off two consecutive festival days by turning everyone’s mood inward and contemplative. The trio’s quiet, intricate counterpoint became part of the woods and mountains.
