It is entitled Bergamo Jazz Memories: five stories to tell about the Festival. the Fondazione Teatro Donizetti project dedicated to Bergamo Jazz. The video series, edited by Bergamo Jazz contributor Roberto Valentino, was recorded on the stage of the Donizetti Theater. Guests, musicians (some of them also as performers), journalists, spectators and operators witnessed highlights from the history of the Orobico festival, from 1969 to the present, from when it was still called the International Jazz Review, which the Azienda del Turismo organized for 12 editions, until the 1991 revival under the auspices of the City of Bergamo and Donizetti Theater.

5 stories to tell about the festival

The video series opens with a recollection of the festival’s early years, starting with the very evening of March 21, 1969, when pianist Giorgio Gaslini performed first solo and then at the head of his big band. Recounting it are Guido Conti, a member of the Bergamo Jazz Club and a spectator on that historic evening and all the subsequent ones that have punctuated the festival, and Gianluigi Trovesi: the most international of Bergamo’s jazz musicians in 1969 was in the audience, but since 1970 he would tread the city’s main jazz stage numerous times.

The installment of the cycle focuses on two iconic concerts, that of Keith Jarrett in 1973 and of the Art Ensemble of Chicago the following year: the images of both events would immediately literally go around the world, appearing in magazines, books and records and displayed in important exhibitions, thanks to the shots of Roberto Masotti, one of the most internationally acclaimed music and entertainment photographers. Together with Masotti, two other distinguished guests such as Famoudou Don Moye, drummer of AEOC itself, and Senegalese-born percussionist Dudu Kouate, who a few years ago joined the historic U.S. lineup, standard-bearer of that Great Black Music that still best synthesizes the relationship between tradition and innovation in African-American music.

The years, controversial for various reasons, when the festival was moved to the Palazzetto dello Sport, are recalled by Enrico Rava, who played at the Palazzetto in 1977 and who would serve as Artistic Director of Bergamo Jazz from 2012 to 2015; pianist Gaetano Liguori, who was greeted by ovations from the youth audience in 1975; and Eco di Bergamo journalist Ugo Bacci, who contextualizes that turbulent season not only from a musical perspective.

Saxophonist Tino Tracanna, a nationally experienced musician also as a teacher, will talk about two distinguished instrument colleagues Archie Shepp and Gato Barbieri, both of whom have entered the annals of the Bergamo jazz festival thanks to their concerts.

The latest “story” of Bergamo Jazz Memories, focusing on the today and tomorrow of the event, features Massimo Boffelli, General Director of the Fondazione Teatro Donizetti, Maria Pia De Vito, current Artistic Director of Bergamo Jazz, Luca Conti, Editor-in-Chief of the monthly magazine Musica Jazz, and two talented young musicians who represent the future of jazz in Italy and beyond, Milanese clarinetist Federico Calcagno and Bergamo drummer Francesca Remigi, also originally from Val Seriana like Gianluigi Trovesi himself.