Concerts on the sea, in the mountains, in the cities of art: from Manchester to Fano, from Gaeta to Lisbon, the best of jazz summer.
Courageous or classic, in crazy places or in more traditional rooms, open to meeting other languages or tenaciously tied to their roots. These are jazz festivals (and everything else revolves around an average curious audience), many every summer in Europe.
Some excellent posters have already started, just finished or are ending in these hours: let’s think of the Ground Music Festival, Ljubljana Jazz, Sile Jazz (which reserves some great things in July), the SüdTirol Jazz Festival), others have yet to present the programs … There would be many others; meanwhile, we have chosen 8 for you.
Go to the Best World Music Festivals
Fano Jazz By the Sea (13-29 July)
Twenty-fifth edition for this festival, reference point of the Adriatic jazz summer, on the stage of the Rocca Malatestiana and beyond. As always, the cut of the festival is to combine quality and usability: this summer’s program does it definitely at its best, with names such as Tingvall Trio, Brad Mehldau, Stanley Clarke, Paolo Fresu’s Devil Quartet, Dee Dee Bridgewater, GoGo Penguin and Bill Frisell. There is also room for the hottest talents, with Simone Graziano, Federica Michisanti, Pasquale Mirra and Giovanni Guidi.
Our advice is not to miss the Vijay Iyer concert.
Copenhagen Jazz Festival (6-15 July)
An ideal time to visit Copenhagen and immerse yourself in a festival as rich as the one that animates the Danish capital in every corner. Between classic proposals (there is the legendary drummer Albert Tootie Heath) and a broad look at the new proposals of the land of Hamlet – they are worth it! – we remember Jenny Hval, Rokia Traorè, Pharoah Sanders, The Comet Is Coming, Charles Lloyd & The Marvels with Bill Frisell, Jakob Bro, Hermeto Pascoal.
Our advice is to discover the sounds of Ibrahim Electric, Horse Orchestra and Hailu Mergia.
Umbria Jazz (13-22 July)
Loved, hated, influential, sold out, unmissable, very lost. They say all the colors about the main Italian jazz festival and as always the truth lies a bit in the middle, in the sense that it is difficult to ask a festival that responds to economic logic of a certain type to take on certain subtleties. However, there is no lack of interesting things, as always, on the Perugian stages: names like Gilberto Gil, Caetano Veloso, David Byrne, Massive Attack, if they certainly don’t have much to do with jazz, are always choices of impeccable artistic quality. As well as Quincy Jones, Gregory Porter, the Hypnotic Brass Ensemble, Pat Metheny, among the big names announced.
As often happens, the best is in collateral events: the Petrella / Mirra duo, the Billy Hart quartet, Dan Kinzelman Ghost, the Mingus Big Band, the Vijay Iyer sextet.
Our advice is not to miss the trio Ponticelli / Diodati / Vignato and the solo by Ethan Iverson.
Jazz Em August, Lisbon (29 July-5 August)
Zornians from all over the world, unite! As is happening more and more often (partly because of costs, partly because it makes sense since it is this artist) some festivals choose to dedicate the entire program to the music of John Zorn and his large Tzadik family. So it will be in Lisbon (which will also be home to the European Jazz Conference in September) for Jazz Em Agosto at the Gulbenkian center. All the Zorn you can imagine and even more: Milford Graves, Marc Ribot, Mary Halvorson, Thurston Moore, Dave Douglas, Kris Davis, Craig Taborn, Ikue Mori, Trevor Dunn, Barbara Hannigan and many others … here it is useless to give you our Advice.
Gaeta Jazz Festival (19-22 July)
Here too the location speaks for itself. The program is also interesting because it tries to move towards younger languages and audiences, linked to the black scene.
The group of guitarist Andrea Molinari is very interesting, involving Enrico Zanisi, Matteo Bortone and Enrico Morello (names well known to those who follow in new jazz) and the saxophonist Logan Richardson for an original project. But space also for the trio of drummer Yusef Dayes, to the rhythms of Gabriele Poso, to the immortal James Senese.
Our suggestion is to be immersed in sound neapolitan-funk of Nu Guinea.
Saalfelden Jazz Festival (23-26 August)
The prince of European summer festivals. Influencer and trend-setter in the heart of the Austrian Alps, between dreams that come true and new adventurous proposals. On the program this year many young Austrians (eye), Marc Ribot, Nicole Mitchell, Elliott Sharp, Leila Martial, Erik Friedlander and much more …
Our suggestion is not to miss the trumpeter Jaimie Branch’s quartet and the violinist Théo Ceccaldi’s Freaks project.
Manchester Jazz Festival (20-28 July)
Of the many excellent British festivals, the Manchester one (which a handful of years ago also won the award for the most innovative European festival) also this year offers a great look at the trends across the Channel. Among the many events there is the duo Binker & Moses, Yazz Ahmed’s Electric Dreams, Beats & Pieces, Paradox Ensemble and much more to discover.
Our suggestion is not to lose the focus on young French jazz, Jazz Migration: the proposals are remarkable, starting with Ikui Doki.