On the occasion of International Jazz Day, an extraordinary opening dedicated to the history and prospects of jazz in Ferrara, including memories and anecdotes of a fifty-year journey, made up of festivals, reviews, prestigious seasons in the Teatro Comunale and 25 years of Torrione.
Everything will be enriched by the performances of the Roaring Twenties Jazz Band, representing the origins of Estense jazz, of the Wilko Trio, which embodies its relevance, and of the students of the Ferrara Conservatory, protagonists of future developments. During the evening, the Emanuele Rossi “Bravò” scholarship will be awarded, dedicated to the founding member and long-time vice-president of the Jazz Club Ferrara, who for over forty years has been committed to the promotion and diffusion of his great passion: jazz music. Thanks to the contribution of ENDAS and the Amici Miei Club, the awarding of the scholarship will allow two young musicians from the Ferrara Conservatory to participate in the highly specialized seminars of the prestigious Siena Jazz academy in the month of August.
The history of jazz in Ferrara and its diffusion is made up of a few, constant faces. One of these is Alessandro Mistri. Today artistic director of Gruppo dei 10, Mistri has always followed the world of African-American music with great interest and involvement. An involvement that already has roots in the experience of Radio Ferrara Centrale, one of the first free Italian radio stations, for which Mistri curated, in the Seventies, a program focused on jazz: Don’t shoot the pianist. And it is also in the Seventies, in particular in 1977, that the Jazz Club Ferrara was born, under the name of Circolo Amici del Jazz. Among its founders? Always Alessandro Mistri, who until 2006 contributed to building a small-large musical niche, which had already moved at the end of the nineties to the Torrione di San Giovanni, at the entrance to Corso Porta Mare, where it still has its headquarters. That first group of enthusiasts included other characters, such as Franco Esposito, Gino Neri, Federico Garberoglio, Pasquale Piganti, Glauco Farinella, Toto Delicato, Franco Bilancioni, Sergio Formignani, Giordano Ronchini, Augusto Mantovani, Franco Mantovani, Emanuele Rossi himself and Giordano Balboni , a true spearhead of the club, for his musical skills, his knowledge and organizational ability. Not to forget, then, presidents such as Andrea Veronese, Jimmy Villotti, Lola Bonora… In 1978 the Roaring Twenties Jazz Band was also formed, which despite the premature death of the leader, still performs today and achieves well-deserved successes. The difficulties of the Circolo Amici del Jazz have been many, but the satisfactions have not diminished. Above all, that of bringing Art Pepper to Italy for the first time, in the 1980 edition of Incontri Jazz Comacchio. How can we forget, then, the party in honor of Ferrara organized in the legendary New York theatre, after the twinning with Carnegie Hall. In those years, all the great names of world jazz arrived in Ferrara: Dexter Gordon, João Gilberto, George Benson, Wynton Marsalis, Elvin Jones, Miles Davis, Dizzy Gillespie, Chet Baker etc. In 2006, after thirty years of service to the Jazz Club, Mistri decided to leave the baton to the team born around the successful experience of the Torrione. And after four years of rest, after having produced the fourth album of the independent label Blue Tower (which he built and directed), with some friends he founded the Gruppo dei 10. The statute of the association, which since 2010 has offered the public a of events entitled All Directions, speaks clearly: these are “ten friends, tired of enduring the progressive and unstoppable barbarization of current socio-cultural models” and who, therefore, decide to “react”. Over the course of 14 years of activity, after almost 500 cultural and musical events, keeping the bar straight on jazz, but without forgetting other genres, such as Italian songwriting or South American music, and other cultural forms, such as art, literature, journalism –, it’s time to take stock, to meet old acquaintances, to propose, in a single evening, a summary of the local jazz history. Obviously, together with the Jazz Club of Ferrara, which has certainly not finished its activities since 2006, gradually consolidating and establishing itself as one of the most appreciated realities on the national and European scene. Every year “Ferrara in Jazz”, from early October to early May, offers approx. 100 concerts, jam sessions, masterclasses, exhibitions, benefit events and artistic residencies of the Tower Jazz Composers Orchestra (the permanent big band of the Torrione) presenting more than 500 national and local international musicians (many of whom have won the Grammy award). The 23/24 Season has crossed the finish line of 25 editions thanks to the quality of which the Jazz Club Ferrara is cited by the American magazine Down Beat among the “Great Jazz Venues”, is a multiple winner, as the best Italian jazz club in readers’ referendums of Jazz It magazine and in 2023 it was awarded best jazz club in the country by the Italian Jazz Federation. For five years the Torrione has also been the venue for lessons, workshops and concerts held by the Jazz Department of the “G. Frescobaldi” in Ferrara, characterizing itself not only as a performance venue, but also as a training and teaching space.
For information 331 4323840 – jazzclubferrara.com
The Jazz Club Ferrara is an Endas club.
