Correggio Jazz

Correggio Jazz Festival

Last Sunday a couple of us went to the Correggio Jazz Festival to see Medeski Martin & Wood play. MMW is by far my favorite jazz band and probably my favorite band to see live. I was very excited when I found out that one of their european dates was only a few hours from me in Italy. The show was in a really fancy horseshoe shaped opera theater which was a bit of a change from seeing them at rock clubs in the US. The show was fantastic; I couldn't have been happier with it. The whole band was in top form and I had a great view from our box seats(!). I'm glad they didn't hold back because they were in a classy joint. As the show went on things got pretty rockin and funky. They encored with covers of Mercy Mercy Mercy and Hey Joe. It was also good to meet a couple Italian mmw fans.

Correggio is in the same region as Ferrara, so it shouldn't be too hard to travel there, right? Wrong. There's no train station there and no buses run at midnight on Sundays. It took us 5 hours to get home. Personally, I can't think of a better way to spend a Sunday evening.

This is the king's box in Teatro Asioli
We sat in a box on the first level
Me and Meredith. I have a beard again.MMW wailing

Ferrara Jazz

Ferrara has a really great jazz club that I have been attending regularly as of late. It's free on every Monday, so it's a good start for the week. The club is located in the weirdest little round medieval building that is built into the city walls. Whoever saw this building and thought, “Hey, we should put a jazz club here and let people in for free,” is a genius, and I'd like to shake his hand. The bands are always different, sometimes local musicians and sometimes touring bands. Usually the music is really good. Last monday it was a band led by trombone and guitar, the week before it was a trumpet trio. One band was really bizarre. They were called Spaghetti Swing and had a chef cook onstage while the band played. The chef would flip the food, light stuff on fire, put a microphone up to sizzling sausage, and other such things. There was also a girl in a swishy white dress who at first seemed like a singer, but really she was just a glorified waitress to serve the food to the crowd and dance. She was the valletta of the band(A valletta is the beautiful female assistant on every Italian tv program. Something like 75% of female teenagers' top career choice is to be a valletta.). Spaghetti Swing also did a little bit of drama when the valletta pulled out a (fake) gun and shot the rest of the band. Everybody fell down on the stage and the show ended (like dying on the ice?). It was weird. Usually the bands have more dignity and “cool” than Spaghetti Swing.

Anyway, the jazz club is really cool and I wish it would come back to the US with me.

Jazz Club Ferrara