Preview: Jazz:Re:Found Festival @ Cella Monte (Piedmont, Italy; Thursday 2 September to Sunday 5 September 2021)

Organising and running a music festival these days might sound like pure madness… It’s not only about passion for and dedication to music and its interpreters, but also a risky work of art considering the volatile Covid-related situation, ever-changing rules and widespread insecurity affecting the cultural sector on a global scale.

That’s why, in our small way, we’d like to support some intrepid organisers who, in spite of everything, decided to run a new edition of their festival in the beautiful Monferrato area of North-West Italy.

We are talking about the Jazz:Re:Found family. The team, led by director Denis Longhi, has just announced the final additions to the 2021’s line-up of the event, which, in pure JZ:R:F’s style, is going to be a genuine celebration of far-reaching sound, jazzy groove and forward-looking beats.

Enriched by an exquisite off-festival season with one-off events happening in Milan, Turin and other Piedmont region locations, Jazz:Re:Found Festival will set things in motion on the 2nd of September in Cella Monte, 30 miles south of Turin.

For four days, the scenic UNESCO World Heritage site of Monferrato, its hills, hamlets and vineyards, will breathe and dance to soul, R&B, jazz, disco, hip-hop, funk, electronica and much, much more… The common denominator is the original artistic and cultural perspectives offered by the protagonists. 

Jazz:Re:Found is indeed about bringing the music discourse forward, stimulating, challenging and re-interpreting it. Names like Apparat, LeFtO, Nu Genea, Danilo Plessow (also known as Motor City Drum Ensemble) and Khalab, who will enlighten this edition’s program, have all constantly widened the music horizons of their listeners.

Starting from their very own music taste, influences and inspirations, which could be techno or ambient (for Apparat), old skool hip-hop and jazz (Lefto), Mediterranean-scented vintagey funk (Nu Genea), the Detroit and Chicago sound (Danilo Plessow) and Afro-futurism (Khalab), they found a way to add their original trademark, re-shaping those sonorities to their liking and moving them one step forward. 

Also on the same wave move more up-and-coming acts who will also be part of this year’s line-up. We can think about the rapturous techno-jazz of Turin-based TUN (Torino Unlimited Noise), the distorted psychedelic electro-pop of Tunisian-born LNDFK or again the atmospheric and cohesive hip-hop, performed with a live musical instrumentation, of Studio Murena. They are just a few names among the Italian ranks, who are propelling the alternative scene in the country.

Which is, as a matter of fact, also what Jazz:Re:Found has been doing with the Italian festival panorama since 2008. Since its debut, the event has always employed offbeat sounds and inclusive languages to inspire new meanings, aims and direction to the Italian music scene. So, it’s not by chance that, 14 years later, Jazz:Re:Found has risen as a polestar showing the route to independent festivals alike.

 

Check out our playlist with some of JAZZ:Re:Found 2021’s highlights: