My experience of Bergamo Jazz 2025 was elating and inspiring. It’s a wonderfully varied festival in great, characterful venues in a beautiful and unique city.
The official stats are healthy: eleven out of twelve ticketed shows were sold out. The concerts had more than 8,500 attendees over the four days of the festival, of whom 18% were from abroad. The audience (presumably these stats are from box office data) had descended on Bergamo from no fewer than 16 Italian regions (out of the total of 20) and from 17 other countries.
2025 was the second year of Joe Lovano’s Artistic Directorship at Bergamo Jazz; he is certainly going to stay in the role for 2026 at least. His is an important presence. Friendly, genial, approachable, popular and generous, and in quite a few settings the most “de luxe” of sitters-in, he is able to determine the vibe of the proceedings, and as I mentioned in my first night review, his musical presence can be transformational.
Links to my previous pieces about the first and second evenings are below. For the fullest of round-ups I am also pleased to link below to the diligent and professional Francesco Spezia’s two pieces (in Italian). If finding ways to communicate the joy of this music is going to have a future, it is because a younger generation of professionals with the energy, the knowledge of Francesco are going to make it happen. Tanto di cappello!
Here follows my round-up of days three and four.
Saturday 22 March
Photo credit: Gianfranco Rota/Bergamo Jazz
The festival takes over a number of great locations in the city, but the opera house, the splendid multi-tiered, horseshoe-shaped Teatro Donizetti is its focal point. There are double bills on the Friday, Saturday and Sunday, so the central one, the Saturday night, is perhaps bound to be in some ways the apex of the festival’s arc.
This concert was a celebration of some of the great senior citizens of jazz. The first half gave us the 85-year old Enrico Rava. He was Artistic Director of Bergamo Jazz from 2012-15, and received the kind of hero’s welcome-back that one might expect it was genuine and warm recognition that anyone would want for their favourite white-haired uncle.
Enrico Rava has been smart. In his “Fearless Five” he is surrounded, and prepares to be enlivened, inspired by younger musicians. It lightens the load for him, and also gives a sense of renewal in the music happening before our eyes. It is might be hip to decry “academic” jazz, but this band – formed in the the corridors, bars and practice rooms and encouraging of the Accademia Nazionale del Jazz in Siena – lets his younger colleagues, and notably excellent trombonist Matteo Paggi take the strain and the responsibility. Paggi is ideal for that role. He is a forceful, strong, leader-ish, but he also has a ridiculously good ear and Frank Rosolino-style fleetness and ease.
The second half brought us The Cookers, the group based around the grandest and oldest of rhythm sections. It is made up of three delightful gentlemen with a combined age of 253: in order of seniority, we were hearing the discreet charm of bassist Cecil McBee (89), the irreplaceable orchestral grandeur of drummer Billy Hart (84) and pianist George Cables (80), who – as ever – has that joyous look of being “ready to see what each new day holds” which – as he told me in an interview – he still remembers from his mother.
In The Cookers, the parts I enjoyed most were when these three were free to roam as a trio, but the front-line also had some notables, notably the wonderfully urbane Eddie Henderson on trumpet.
In the afternoon at the Auditorio was Alexander Hawkins’s “Dialogue Quintet” a group of mostly younger players brought into being by the Novara Festival. What stays in the mind is the assuredness and the dramaturgy with which Alexander Hawkins builds a coherent and varied set. The pianist recalled a previous visit to Bergamo as a member of Louis Moholo’s band with Jason Yarde’s tune “Thank you for today.” African time, stretched, patient, alive with anticipation yet unhurried. This was not just a good place to start a set, it was brilliant, settling, mood-setting a great springboard for the band to set off with confidence in any direction it chooses.
There was a very clever touch near the end of the set. Having named all but one of the band and given a glowing plaudit for each one in turn… I found myself wondering if Hawkins had inadvertently forgotten to mention the drummer Francesca Remigi? Er, no, he absolutely hadn’t. He started reflecting on the fact when you come from a beautiful city like his (Oxford) or hers (Bergamo) you stop noticing what’s around you, and described her as one of the finest drummers anywhere. It was the cue for a stupendous round of applause from the large audience in the Auditorio.
Sunday 23 March
The 11am concert by London-raised bass legend Barry Guy and Catalan pianist Jordina Millà was something very special. Free improv as beauty, as gentle persuasion, as unbelievably responsive musicality from two deep thinkers about music with incredible ears. Phil Johnson did a great review of their ECM album recorded live in Munich for UKJN, but the grace and class and interaction of their live performance… you have to be there. I hope that Barry Guy will at some stage get a proper homecoming concert in London, he is a phenomenon and deserves to be welcomed back!
I was curious how the two piano duo of Nik Bärtsch and Tania Giannouli would function. Bärtsch brings to performance an instinctive quest for rhythmic sparring which has been part of his way of making music for decades, whereas Giannouli – to my ears – has remarkable empathy, soul and communicative power in her playing. Together they set off mainly in the direction of sonic exploration, with a guiding spirit that had more lightness and playfulness than I was expecting.
The final evening in the Teatro Donizetti brought a contrasting double bill of Marc Ribot in the first half, and Diane Reeves. The Ribot group’s impassioned and loud set culminated in a rendition of “Bella Ciao” in English. I was drawn in much more by the sheer individuality, authenticity, musicality and communicative power of Dianne Reeves. The final sequence, starting as a blues in a duo with bassist Reuben Rogers, then an “All Blues” increasing inexorably in fervour, and segue-ing into an eloquent credo and statement of her societal values was wonderful. Dianne Reeves might be the ideal festival closing act. Our much-missed colleague Alison Bentley once described why the singer is so special. I know I can’t improve on Alison’s words.
I know I also missed a lot in Bergamo… as is inevitable. One fellow journalist chided me for having missed Stick Men, the prog group made up of Tony Levin, Pat Mastelotto and Markus Reuter in the Teatro Sociale, and I was also told that the ethereal violin/accordion duo of Sara Calvanelli and Virginia Sutera at the Accademia Carrara art gallery was very special indeed. I recently heard trumpeter Iacopo Teolis in London holding his own in a trumpet section with Mike Lovat and Tom Walsh, so I kick myself for having missed him here as leader.
One of my journalist colleagues told me he had done something which I still want to believe is impossible, which is to go into a restaurant and have a bad meal. I do keep trying…. and am still expecting to fail – the city is a culinary paradise as well as having a very special jazz festival.
Sebastian Scotney was the guest at the festival of Fondazione Teatro Donizetti
