RENZO ARBORE
Last night Renzo Arbore and his Swing Maniacs played to the packed out Turreno Theatre in a charity concert for the Lega del Filo d’Oro, a charitable organisation dedicated to helping blind and deaf children and promoted by Vodafone Omnitel.
The show, led by the great showman Arbore, was focused on swing and dedicated to the most beautiful Italian songs that inspired this type of music. It included pieces written by the finest Italian artists, such as Modugno, Natalino Otto, Lelio Luttazzi and some of the most beautiful melodies composed by Arbore himself.  (by Giovanni Serrazanetti)

GEORGE RUSSELL LIVING TIME ORCHESTRA 
Composer, arranger and bandleader George Russell, who with the publication in 1953 of his Lydian Concept of Tonal Organization became one of the few individuals to make a theoretical contribution to the stylistic development of modern jazz, inaugurated a 6-night stand during UJ 2002 at the Teatro Morlacchi on Monday evening with a program that included five works that revealed the versatility and originality of a true musical visionary.  Russell, who had previously appeared at UJ in 1990 and 1994, returned to Perugia at the helm of an edition of his Living Time Orchestra that includes such stellar soloists as trumpeters Tiger Okoshi and Stanton Davis, trombonist Dave Bergeron and saxophonists Steve Slagle and George Garzone.   continua

(by Mitchell Feldman)

STILL GREAT LARRY WILLIS
Larry Willis appears daily in a ‘round midnight’ at the small and beautiful Santa Cecilia Auditorium and gives a performance that absolutely can’t be missed. The famous and talented American jazzman has worked with some of the greatest jazz performers, such as Roy Hargrove. Larry Willis has worked on about 300 recordings all told. 
Willis appeares at Umbria Jazz with his trio featuring the polished and powerful bassist Peter Washington and the imaginative and dynamic drummer Lewis Nash. He uses a modern musical style to express the finest traditional art of the jazz piano trio. The entire evening is notable for the high level of playing in both the standard pieces and the many originals.

(by Giovanni Serrazanetti)

GREAT GUITARS
The trio of guitarists Bucky Pizzarelli, Howard Alden and Frank Vignola
presented a sunset concert at the Heineken Stage in Piazza IV Novembre Monday evening that showcased their skills at performing jazz versions of standards from the American popular songbook. Led by Pizzarelli, a true “Sultan of Swing” who plays a special 7-string guitar, the trio not only performed hit
tunes from the Broadway and Hollywood blockbusters but also several big band
classics like Benny Goodman’s “Stompin’ At The Savoy” and Count Basie’s “L’il Darlin’” which they distilled down to their very essence from arrangements for larger ensembles. The Great Guitars trio will perform at the Heineken Stage in Piazza IV Novembre at 19:30 every evening from 17-20 July and can also be heard at the Bottega del Vino at midnight every day through 21 July.

(by Mitchell Feldman)

THE POETRY OF RENATO SELLANI
Renato Sellani’s mastery of jazz piano is widely known from his performances with a large number of talented artists.
Today, at 1:00 p.m. Renato Sellani performed at the Bottega del Vino with his trio featuring the bassist Massimo Morricone and the percussionist Gianluca Nannini.

SILJE NERGAARD 
Another capacity crowd filled the Oratorio Santa Cecilia on Tuesday 16 July to hear the talented young Norwegian singer and composer Silje Nergaard make her debut in Perugia at UJ 2002. On tour in support of her seventh recording, At First Light, Nergaard has recently emerged as one of the most original voices on the European jazz scene and came to Italy on the heels of triumphs at the international festivals in Molde, Stockholm and The Hague. Dressed in fairylike diaphanous pastel colors, her blonde hair cropped short in a Peter Pan haircut, she cast a magical spell on the audience this afternoon with her performances of such original songs as “Out Of Sight, Out Of Mind,” “Keep On Backing Losers,” “There’s Trouble Brewing” and “There’s Always A First Time” which deal with falling in and out of love and other dynamics of being in romantic entanglements. Nergaard also offered inventive interpretations of Sting’s “If You Love Somebody Set Them Free” and Stevie Wonder’s “Blame It On The Sun” which reveal her talent as a highly original song stylist. Nergaard will appear again at the Oratorio at 17:30 on both Wednesday 17 July and Thursday 18 July and you won’t miss this chance to hear one of Europe’s brightest rising stars.
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(by Mitchell Feldman)