JAZZMI, THE NEW FESTIVAL, BRIGHTENS UP THE NIGHTS OF MILAN

November 7, 2016

Jazzmi seems to be a gamble that has paid off from the start. Milan’s new jazz festival, created to draw in the general public, also the young, to a musical genre up until now considered of rather selective appeal, began successfully on Friday 4th November. On the opening evening and also those following all the concerts were sold out. The Teatro dell’Arte and Ponderosa Music & Art project, in collaboration with Blue Note (part of Casta Diva Group), with the support of the Milan City Council and the artistic direction of Titti Santini and Luciano Linzi, will see during the next few days hundreds of performers, including stars of the calibre of Dee Dee Bridgewater, Gregory Porter, John Pizzarelli, Freddy Cole, John Scofield and many others. The Teatro dell’Arte and Blue Note are the two principal venues of the festival, but the many events lined up will be hosted in more than 40 different locations, some of them unexpected: theatres, jazz clubs and nightclubs, but also museums, bookshops, cinemas, historical buildings and archeological sites. This is a widespread festival which has the intention of showing the universal appeal of jazz music in the best possible way, its history, its present and its future. It is an event which wants to open itself to the most recent contaminations of jazz: from the rapport with electronic music to the popular return of swing. The main partners of this first edition are Hamilton (Swatch Group), KLM, Hilton and Yamaha.
“The opening evening and the following ones went incredibly well,” declared Andrea De Micheli and Luca Oddo, respectively CEO and President of Casta Diva Group (the communication company which owns Blue Note Milano). “We went personally to many of the concerts in the programme: everywhere we saw ‘sold out’ stickers and huge numbers of young people. Milan has a large public that is constantly alert, you just have to offer what people are looking for and with JazzMi there were queues to get into the concerts, even those in the late evening, and fans worthy of football matches.”
With JazzMi, De Micheli and Oddo’s idea to make Blue Note a sanctuary of jazz that is more open to the city and to a younger better informed and enthusiastic public, becomes a reality. “The sensation you get when you find yourself standing in front of one of those unmissable events which every so often invade Milan, like the Fuori Salone in April, was perceived by everyone,” maintains Luciano Linzi, artistic director of JazzMi. “The entire city responded with enthusiasm, jam-packing the most unusual venues, demonstrating the desire to be part of that contagious party atmosphere created by the festival. Equally crowded out were the talks on the history of jazz and the various presentations in bookshops.
So, a fantastic success, glitzy, sophisticated and beyond everyone’s expectations, which will see the next concerts mobbed by an audience of passionate fans. An event which has what it takes to become a permanent date in the city’s calendar, warmly looked forward to by the public and generously supported by the city authorities and its corporate partners.