This edition of ON the Beat was originally emailed to subscribers on July 20, 2023. To receive Josef Woodard’s music newsletter in your inbox each Thursday, sign up at independent.com/newsletters.
As I write this, I’m in Perugia, Italy, basking in the seasonal heat (not necessarily the globally-warmed kind) and steeped in the annual poly-sonic banquet that is the Umbria Jazz Festival. Assisi is just down the road, a half-hour train ride away, and other treats await in this region, lesser known than Tuscany, but well worth the visit, on or off festival time.
The hilltop city of Perugia brims with layers of history, from the Etruscan walls and wells of pre-BC centuries to Roman architecture. In the much more modern era, an important landmark is, in the last 50 years, the Umbria Jazz Fest that has been making its way into the upper reaches of the world’s jazz festival culture. To many, the very word “Umbria” has a jazz association.
Thanks to the festival founded by Carlo Pagnotta, music ripples in the city air for ten summer days and nights, from the mainstage arena shows to the opera-boxy vintage venue of Teatro Morlacchi (circa 1780) and the intimate performance “Sala Podiani,” in the Galleria Nazionale dell’Umbria. On the streets, outdoor stages and buskers keep the air thick with musical ululations, from the 11:30 a.m. wake-up call march by the hip brass-drums group Funk Off to music after midnight. Our street-facing room in the Hotel la Rosetta was rarely a quiet retreat for 10 days, and who’s complaining?
As with many jazz festivals, pop music sneaks onto the menu, partly as a way of bankrolling more specialized music in the line of actual jazz. So it goes with this festival, with an arena line-up framed by Bob Dylan as opener and blues-rocker Joe Bonamossa, along with trusty crowd-cullers Ben Harper, Stewart Copeland’s cheesy “Police De-Ranged for Orchestra” shindig, and the jazz-flavored party-stoking of Snarky Puppy.