The Basilica of San Simplicio wasn't enough to accommodate the entire Time in Jazz audience during its Olbia stop, which, after several years, returns to the city's iconic Romanesque church . And there couldn't have been a happier place, amidst the austere granite architecture, to immerse oneself in the intimate and spiritual dialogue of "Hamdelaneh," featuring Markus Stockhausen on trumpet and flugelhorn, and Iranian Alireza Mortazavi, composer and player of the santur, the eight-century-old struck string instrument of Persian origin.
A meeting of East and West and of two different musical backgrounds (Stockhausen is the son of the famous composer Karlheinz, and Mortazavi is also a scholar of his country's folk music) for the project born from a meeting in Germany and consolidated—as Stockhausen himself explained—at the Mittelfest in Cividale del Friuli, where their first album, "Hamdelaneh" (2019), was recorded "with the same heart," which became a symbol of their partnership. The highly appreciated concert, lasting over an hour, concluded with an encore that the trumpeter played with the "Miles mute" in homage to the festival's theme, "Kind of Blue."
Tonight's Piazza del Popolo stage kicks off at 9:15 PM with the "Miles Ahead" award ceremony for the young Italian-Tunisian rapper and singer-songwriter Sayf : an honor that demonstrates the festival's commitment to promoting innovative artistic developments and emerging voices. At 9:30 PM, the first set of the evening will focus on pianist, composer, and producer Bugge Wesseltoft, who will perform an entirely solo version of his album "Am Are," released in 2025, featuring numerous prominent guests. At 10:30 PM, one of the most anticipated events, Apparat (aka Sascha Ring, born in 1978), one of the most influential figures in German electronic music for over twenty years, arrives.
The tour continues over the next few days, visiting 15 municipalities with high-quality offerings that combine music and local exploration . Tomorrow at 11:00 a.m. in San Giuseppe Park in Sant'Antonio di Gallura, there will be a concert by Satoyama, a quartet composed of Luca Benedetto (trumpet and keyboard), Christian Russano (guitars and electronics), Marco Bellafiore (double bass and electronics), and Gabriele Luttino (drums, glockenspiel, and electronics). The afternoon concert is at 6:00 p.m. near the country church of San Francesco, two kilometers from Alà dei Sardi, featuring Koro Almost Brass, an original wind ensemble made up of some of the most interesting and established Italian jazz and swing musicians: Cristiano Arcelli (alto saxophone), Fulvio Sigurtà (trumpet and flugelhorn), Giovanni Hoffer (French horn), Massimo Morganti (trombone), and Glauco Benedetti (tuba).
