As a trumpet player and patron of Time in Jazz, Paolo Fresu couldn't help but celebrate the centenary of Miles Davis's birth, which falls this year. The 39th edition of the jazz festival, scheduled in Berchidda and fifteen other towns in northern Sardinia from August 8th to 16th, with a delicious appetizer in June (19th to 21st), is dedicated to "Kind of Blue," Davis's masterpiece and the best-selling jazz album of all time.
This morning in Paris, hosted by the Italian Cultural Institute and attended by its director Antonio Calbi, Fresu presented the program together with manager Mattea Lissia, outlining a rich program of events that includes more than just the evening concerts in Piazza del Popolo and performances at cultural sites that host the music of Time in Jazz during the day. This year, too, there will be time for Time to Children, Time After Time, and Time To Read, as well as the Festivalbar, exhibitions, and displays. And Fresu's opera house will also perform "Kind of Miles," which will open the season in Piazza del Popolo on the evening of the 11th. This year, the festival's epicenter will feature trumpeter Matilde Gori and Norwegian pianist Bugge Wesseltoft, the electronic music of Apparat, Nicholas Payton with the Butcher Brown quintet, and the Fabrizio Bosso Quartet.
In the days leading up to August 8th, the very first events stand out: Bandakadabra's performance on the Sardinia Ferries Livorno-Golfo Aranci ferry, the great Amii Stewart with "Back to my Roots" in Puntaldìa, and the Andrea Motis Guitar Trio in Porto Rotondo. On the 9th, everyone will gather at Agnata di Tempio for the tribute concert to Fabrizio De André, performed by Diodato, and in the following days there will be performances by Attilio Zanchi, Flavio Boltro Miles Smiles Quartet and Stefano Bagnoli, Christian Meyer, Giuseppe Vitale and Federico Malaman, Giovanni Falzone Libera Band, Luca Aquino and Natalino Marchetti, Theon Cross on tuba, and much more. "With over seventy events and hundreds of artists from every corner of the world, we will try to convey what Miles would have wanted to be and what we are today, reaping his rewards," explains Fresu, "on an island where the blue of the sea meets the blue of the sky."
