Charles Lloyd, Lizz Wright and Chris Potter uplift Umbria Jazz Festival 2024

Tim Dickeson
Friday, August 23, 2024

There was another star studded line-up at Perugia’s enchanting and spectacular jazz festival

Charles Lloyd at Umbria Jazz 2024 - All photos by Tim Dickeson

This year the Umbria jazz festival (UJFF) set in the ancient hilltop city of Perugia was the most successful edition ever with 42,000 tickets sold resulting in a gross revenue of €2.4m. The festival featured over 250 concerts using 12 locations with a total of 600 musicians playing during the 10 days of the festival. Umbria Jazz is a full-on experience with three distinctive elements.

The Arena Santa Giuliana is where the headline acts perform. The programme here is designed to appeal to as many people as possible. Each night features two shows starting at 9pm with a secondary stage starting at 7.30pm for those that want to eat and drink before the main show. There is also an after-show concert too. If you only looked at the headline acts of the festival it would be easy to think that this is not much of a jazz festival as there were only 4 nights featuring jazz - the rest a mix of pop, world, and rock music.

The second element of UJF are the two dedicated Jazz Venues - the very cool Sala Podani located on the top floor of the National Gallery of Umbria and the wonderful Morlacchi Theatre - a typical Italian theatre with stalls and five floors of boxes - perfect for listening to jazz. The theatre has a cute little bar that usually hosts a jazz photographic exhibition during the festival. There were 28 shows on the programme at these two venues.

The third and probably with visitors the most popular part of UJF is the free programme. Each day starts at 11.30am with a street parade by the excellent Marching band ‘Funk Off’ which is repeated at 6pm. During the day there are two main free stages where concerts are played from 1pm till the early hours of the morning. UJF uses a rotating roster of artists who play at different times of the day on either stage so if you miss one you can always catch them again. These stages cater for Big Band, soul and blues aficionados. The third free stage, new for this year was the Swing stage at the Mercato Coperto - each evening you can eat drink and Lindy hop and much later listen to DJ sets.

Perugia also has buskers that fill the city with live music at every turn. This plethora of music along with the on-street cafes and restaurants make the heart of Perugia the place to be. There is a buzz and a feeling about UJF that you really don’t find at many other festivals. All of the stages are within a 5-minute walk with the exception of the Arena Santa Giuliana - the largest of the paid for stages which is just a 15 minutes’ walk and escalator ride away. There are dinner jazz venues and a late-night jam if you still haven’t had enough.

This year’s biggest ticket in the arena was Lenny Kravitz - his concert had a standing audience of around 16,000 which I estimate to be more than all of the jazz concert attendees added together. The other big-ticket bands in the arena were rock band Toto, the excellent Raye, Nile Rogers & Chic, Italian pop star Vinicio Capossela, Fatoumata Diawara and the Brazilian singer songwriter Djavan.

The festival is very clear, rightly so, that this formula is the only sustainable way to keep the festival running with the current programme and to expand it in the years to come.

With so many concerts seen and heard here I have picked a few of my personal highlights.

The main arena is really a little soulless for most types of jazz due to its sprawling size but both singers Raye & Lizz Wright managed to captivate their respective audiences with a feeling of warmth and intimacy. Raye has a superb voice and her songs with their almost jazzy arrangements fitted really well here. The audience for her show were a mix of her obvious fans and the, shall we say ‘older jazz audience’. No one left muttering ‘this isn’t jazz’, and the entire audience young and old was up on their feet dancing along with her after a few numbers. Raye has a strong voice and is a great entertainer - can’t wait for her ‘American Songbook’ album in a few years…

Lizz Wright also captivated and held the audience in the palm of her hand. Her choice of material seems to have subtly changed to the more blues/soul style with less gospel. Her touching rendition of Neil Young’s ‘Old Man’ more than did the song justice. Her catchy song ‘Sparrow’ was followed by Sandy Denny’s, ‘Who Knows where the Time Goes’ which was just sublime. I probably haven’t heard that song for 40 years but she made it sound fresh whilst retaining the poignancy of Denny’s original - for those with long memories it was tears all round. Lizz Wright’s show was wonderful moment and the audience loved every minute of it.

Chris Potter played the same night as the Gil Evans remembered Orchestra - the orchestra featured some of the musicians that played with Evans here in 1974.

Potter is probably one of the best saxophonists in the world today and his set here featured a stellar band with Brad Mehldau (piano), John Patitucci (bass) & Johnathan Blake (Drums) who were awesome. Playing the material from his Cd ‘Eagles Point’ the combination of Potter and Mehldau was irresistible. Each musician took breath-taking solos and as an ensemble they combined to play off each other brilliantly.

Enrico Rava & Charles Lloyd are two giants of jazz who are still innovating and pushing the musical boundaries - both are in their mid 80’s and neither show any signs of slowing down. Enrico Rava in particular is quite remarkable - he was hospitalised for a month earlier this year with a chest problem but has since recovered to not only play but to tour in Italy too.

Rava presented his, ’Fearless Five’ band featuring Matteo Paggi (trombone), long time collaborator Francesco Diodati (guitar), Francesco Ponticelli (bass) and Evita Polidoro (drums). Rava and Lloyd share the same passion for playing with gifted up and coming players - giving these musicians both experience and exposure to a wider audience.

Paggi is a busy player spitting out a stream of notes and a perfect contrast to Rava’s more laid back and mellow style. Diodati (who also played the festival with his own excellent group Weave4) adds an electronic sonic edge to the sound giving the band a triple prong when it really starts to cook.

The highlight of the show came on the gentle song, ‘Amnesia’ featuring wordless ethereal singing from drummer Polidoro. Diodati plays a beautiful melody and Ponticelli adds a great bass solo. As Rava doesn’t feature in this song he stood directly behind Polidoro as she sung. At the end of the song, he placed his hands on her shoulders and kissed her head, a beautiful and touching act that had Polidoro in tears as she took the applause. She told me after the show that this moment was one she will never forget.

Charles Lloyd, as I have commented before, is playing the best music of his career at the moment. His Sky quartet featured Jason Moran (piano), Larry Grenadier (bass) and Eric Harland (drums).

The music for this concert was taken from his ‘The Sky Will Still Be There Tomorrow’ recording featuring this band. The concert was breath-taking in every way. Lloyd’s playing was superb throughout - mellow, succinct and from deep within. Moran has an incredible bond with Lloyd and his interjections and solos were awesome. Lloyd never spoke so there were no introductions, but as the music flowed so freely between the numbers it mattered little - better more music than talking.

Each member of the band contributed equally and Lloyd, between playing, sat and listened to those around him smiling and nodding his appreciation at the end of their featured parts. As the last tune ended, Lloyd emitted an emotional shout and was visibly moved so much that Eric Harland came over, put his arm around him giving him a big hug.

It was an emotional and exhausting concert for Lloyd, one in which he gave everything - the quality of the playing and the compositions was exceptional.

Piano led music featured heavily including 7 solo performances. The two that stood out for me were the two trios of Christian Sands and Dado Moroni. Sands and Moroni both played at the Morlacchi theatre which is the Mecca for jazz in Perugia. The warm ambience and dark intimacy get the audience as close to the musicians as you can be without actually being on stage.

Sands is a very gifted pianist and composer and his band featuring brother Ryan Sands (drums) and Jonathon Muir Cotton (bass) fitted perfectly together. The selection of originals and standards was well chosen - Sands own composition ‘MMC’ an up-tempo romp was fun and his covers of Brubeck’s ‘Strange Meadowlark’ and Steve Winwood’s, ‘Can’t Find My Way Home’ were both well-arranged showcasing his excellent playing skills and technique.

Dado Moroni played the last jazz concert of the festival at the Morlacchi theatre, which is always a bitter sweet concert to play. His trio with legends Eddie Gomez (bass) and Joe La Barbera (drums) is world class. The concert was called ‘Kind of Bill’ a nod not only to Bill Evans - with whom Gomez and Barbera had of course played - but also his contemporaries like Miles Davis, Sonny Rollins and Victor Young. They started with the La Barbera tune ‘Kind of Bill’ which set the tone for the rest of the show - a beautifully melodic but contemporary set that was the perfect end to what had been a very full-on festival.

Umbria Jazz is a must-go festival. All the music here is top class and the location in Perugia is stunning. Ignore the headline grabbing names and dig further down in the programme where you will find what has always been the real treasure of this festival - the most fantastic jazz.

Listening List

Lizz Wright

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R5ItXOSUCRU - ‘Who Knows Where The Time Goes’

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HIGncbJquBI - ‘Old Man’

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7GHPVfhdK5k - ‘Sparrow’

Raye

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uI9gL9CuEaI - ‘UJF 2024 The Thrill is Gone’

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=boGxzoLJpUo - ‘U J2024’

Chris Potter

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G1yiNPTVrIY - ‘Eagles Point’

Enrico Rava

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G1yiNPTVrIY - ‘Fearless Five’