"It's something that's never changed, fortunately. It happens to me all the time, and it happened again on Saturday night, while I was preparing for Paola Turci's concert at the Agnata. When I put oil on the trumpet's valves, I found exactly that feeling..."

A memory?

"The smell of the Berchidda band headquarters. For me, even today, it's the smell of music."

The band was his school.

"My teacher was the conductor, Bustianu Piga, who taught me to play the trumpet, the trombone, and the percussion instruments. And I, a boy in a blue uniform and gold insignia, learned to play everything, from funeral marches to opera arias to sacred songs."

The artisanal apprenticeship of Paolo Fresu, an international jazz star who has taken Berchidda, his hometown, all over the world and catapulted the world to his hometown. Time in Jazz, the festival he conceived in 1988, reaches its 38th edition this year and has since gained an ever-growing audience, the success of a program gradually expanded to the surrounding area, and the satisfaction of a financial return to the area. One wonders how all this was possible in an inland town and a border town (between Gallura and Logudoro).

Piera Serusi's interview in L'Unione Sarda, on newsstands today and on the Digital App.

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