Spectacle
Ace Jazz Festival San Marino
San Marino – A festival that was born successful despite the inevitable anomalies in the year of the pandemic: the first edition of the Ace Jazz Festival San Marino will be held from July 18 to August 22 in San Marino.
Conceived before the health emergency with a combination of music and tennis in mind, the festival has been remodeled to make its debut anyway. It will therefore be a “low-density” edition in which the links with sport will be mentioned to be then resumed and developed in future editions.
Ace, in tennis, is a winning service, a first perfectly targeted shot that goes straight to the goal. And such seems to be the first edition of the San Marino festival: in a summer in which live programming will be radically reduced (in the best case scenario: the alternative is to remain inactive), being able to give life to a new initiative is like winning a Slam.
National music celebrities like Raphael Gualazzi and Ginevra Di Marco have been invited to play this first musical match. Besides them, jazz sets with Rita Marcotulli and Dado Moroni and the Tower Jazz Composers Orchestra.
Ample space will be reserved for local artists, who will be numerous in the festival program. Despite being one of the professional categories most affected by the effects of lockdown, the musicians have been able to be a source of comfort for all the people confined at home, continuing to play, taking advantage of new technologies to reach listeners with their message of solidarity and cultural resistance. Now they too can resume their live activity, continuing to perform for the community but no longer only through the virtual window of the web.
The concert activity will take place in the strictest respect of the regulations and ordinances for live performances, including the application of the safety distance between spectators, after which the available seats will be limited. In order to allow a wider audience participation, the four main concerts will be broadcast live streaming on the social pages of the festival (www.facebook.com/AceJazzFestivalSanMarino).
Ace Jazz Festival San Marino is organized by the Associazione Produzione Culturale with the artistic direction of Sara Jane Ghiotti, in collaboration with the Republic of San Marino and Visit San Marino, the support of the Secretariat of State for Tourism of the Republic of San Marino and with the contribution of Conad, Coal, La Sociale, Dpiù, Titan Coop.
Jazz on the tennis court (and other main stages)
The four main concerts of the Ace Jazz Festival San Marino, concentrated in as many consecutive evenings between 4 and 7 August, form a sort of festival within the festival, shifting the attention from the numerous ‘sound events’ spread throughout the territory to a series of major live events.
The first of these main concerts will be on August 4th at Campo Bruno Reffi with the pianist and singer Raphael Gualazzi. Master of rhythm, visionary author of ironic and introspective lyrics, Gualazzi will present his great hits, but he will also tackle the jazz-blues repertoire that is very dear to him and will not fail to propose some songs from the new album Ho un piano, released in February and containing the single “Carioca”, presented in competition at the Sanremo Festival.
On August 5th we will move to the Cava dei Balestrieri: here the vocalist Ginevra Di Marco, still famous for her debut as female voice of C.S.I., will propose “Quello che conta”, a project dedicated to Luigi Tenco’s songs. Waiting for the imminent release of the record that will immortalize these interpretations of Di Marco, the live will be a journey through the masterpieces of one of the masters of Italian music, undertaken by one of the most intense and exciting voices of our country.
The concert on August 6 will be the most characteristic concert for the identity of the festival. Two of the most important Italian jazz pianists, Rita Marcotulli and Dado Moroni, will face each other on an unusual stage: the playing surface of the Centro Tennis Cassa di Risparmio. A duet with a sporty set design, which could inspire the two musicians to play friendly notes but also a dense exchange of competitive sinkings.
On 7 August the festival returns to the Cava dei Balestrieri with a concert (free of charge) by the Tower Jazz Composers Orchestra, the resident formation of the Ferrara Jazz Club, held in collaboration with the Bologna Jazz Festival. Entrusted to the direction of Piero Bittolo Bon and Alfonso Santimone, the over twenty members of the Tower Jazz Composers Orchestra collectively bring their musical ideas into play with creativity and surprising empathy, performing a repertoire that combines original compositions and reinterpretations of pieces from various traditions (the orchestra’s book features pieces by Steve Coleman and Frank Zappa).
The “Low Density” Concerts
In times unsuitable for concerts with a great public appeal, the Ace Jazz Festival San Marino launches the format “Low Density”, making it the slogan of this first edition: small musical ensembles (from solo to trio) positioned in atypical, picturesque and scenic places, where the audience can be heard without gathering. Acoustic Preludes’ more than real concerts, unexpected live soundtracks located in sites of historical and artistic interest in the historic center: they will take place in the late afternoon, with double set, and will all be free appointments. With the involvement of many local artists, the music will have no stylistic barriers: jazz, world music, folk, classical, blues, Brazil.
It will be the live events “A bassa densità” to kick off the new San Marino music festival: Saturday, July 18 with the jazz duo formed by pianist Roberto Stefanelli and saxophonist Alessandro Scala (at the Giardino dei Liburni) and the world sounds of singer Barbara Andreini and accordionist Gabriele Antonelli (in Piazza della Libertà).
“Low density” will therefore become a fixed appointment every Saturday, always with a double proposal. On July 25th at Orti Borghesi there will be Brazilian music with the duo Choro de Rua while at Giardino dei Liburni there will be jazz with the duo created by singer Valentina Monetta and pianist Simone Migani. On August 1st the music will be in Porta San Francesco, with the classical duo of Aldo Zangheri (viola) and Monica Micheli (harp), and in the Area Verde Contrada dei Fossi, with the blues of Paolo Beccari (vocals) and Omar Bologna (guitar). On August 8th there will be a cello solo by Anselmo Pelliccioni (at the Prima Torre) and the jazz duo of saxophonist Simone La Maida with guitarist Roberto Monti (Piazza Garibaldi). On 15th, mid-August with the folk of the Bears (at Porta San Francesco) and the experimental performance on sax by Dan Kinzelman (at Passo delle Streghe).
The last notes of the Ace Jazz Festival San Marino will resonate on August 22 in Piazzale dei Mortai, with the duo Step Two, and in the Giardino dei Liburni, with the classical pages interpreted by Emanuela Valmaggi (classical guitar) and Simonetta Agarici (piano).
The live shows “A bassa densità” will also characterize the central week of the festival, providing an introduction to some of the main evening concerts. On August 5 the jazz manouche trio Welcome to the Django will be located in Piazza Garibaldi. On August 6 at Prima Torre there will be Aldo Capicchioni on violin and Michela Zanotti on viola.
But to reinforce the four highlight nights of the festival there will also be after-concert jam sessions. The first two jam sessions will be at the libroteca Treesessanta: on August 4 by Alex Gorbi, on August 5 in collaboration with the Rimini Jazz Club. The remaining two jam sessions will be held at the restaurant La Fratta: the 6th by Giulio Angrisani and Laura Klain, the 7th with the trio of Michele Sperandio.
