JAZZ AT DONIZETTI

The three customary subscription evenings at the Donizetti Theater, which has always been the Festival’s main venue, run from March 22 to 24 (starting at 8:30 p.m.), featuring illustrious names in jazz today, starting with one of the leading six-string specialists, John Scofield, opening night’s opener. The Ohio native guitarist will present his project “Yankee Go Home,” a journey between rock and folk stars and stripes, obviously through the filter of his distinct jazz sensibility. This will be followed by the quartet of Puerto Rican-born saxophonist Miguel Zenón, one of today’s brightest standard bearers of jazz imbued with Latin aromas and rhythms. Also opening the evening of Saturday 23 will feature a valiant saxophonist, Bobby Watson, a veteran of endless musical battles in the vein of the most sanguine Bop jazz language. Then it will be the turn of Bergamo Jazz 2024’s special project, conceived to coincide with the 50th anniversary of the concert the Art Ensemble of Chicago gave at the Donizetti on March 20, 1974: for the occasion, drummer and percussionist Famoudou Don Moye, rhythmic engine of the famous group, has set up a lineup including bassist Junius Paul, violinist Eddy Kwon, pianist and trombonist Simon Sieger, poet and electronic musician Moor Mother and Dudù Kouate, percussionist, multi-instrumentalist and Senegalese griot who is at home in Bergamo. Sunday 24, the last evening at the Donizetti, will see the return of another name that belongs in the annals of the Bergamo festival, South African pianist Abdullah Ibrahim, an authentic poet of the 88 keys who will then leave the task of setting the final seal on Bergamo Jazz 2024 to a supergroup called Modern Standards Supergroup, namely saxophonist Ernie Watts, Danish pianist Niels Lan Doky, bassist Felix Pastorius, son of the legendary Jaco and also a prodigious musician, and drummer Harvey Mason.