MODENA, PIAZZA ROMA
Monday, July 19

In 1963 John Coltrane recorded his only album with a singer: John Coltrane and Johnny Hartman, still a touchstone of vocal jazz. For Coltrane’s centenary in September 2026, Branford Marsalis decided to revisit it, this time with a female voice. He first thought of male singers, slept on it, and woke up with one name: Dianne Reeves. The result is Dedicated to You, released on Blue Note, which pairs the six standards of the original with instrumental pieces from Coltrane’s songbook. Marsalis, a three-time Grammy winner and NEA Jazz Master, has led his quartet since 1986; with Joey Calderazzo on piano, Eric Revis on bass and Justin Faulkner on drums, it is one of the most closely knit bands in jazz. Its previous album, a reimagining of Keith Jarrett’s Belonging, earned a Grammy nomination. Dianne Reeves, also an NEA Jazz Master, has won five Grammys, three of them for consecutive albums, a first in any vocal category. She was sixteen when trumpeter Clark Terry invited her to sing with him, and she knew the Coltrane–Hartman record by heart as a child, because her parents loved Johnny Hartman. At the Jazz Open Modena, the Branford Marsalis Quartet with Dianne Reeves performs at Piazza Roma, on an evening shared with the Stefano Bollani Quintet.

For Stefano Bollani, music is a game that has to be reinvented every night. In 2025 he found new partners for it: a quintet of musicians from the US, France and Brazil, playing a repertoire written specially for the band. On drums is Jeff Ballard, for two decades a member of the Brad Mehldau Trio, and on bass Scott Colley, a four-time Grammy nominee who spent five years in Herbie Hancock’s trio. French accordionist Vincent Peirani adds lyricism and colour, and Brazilian percussionist Mauro Refosco, who has worked with David Byrne, the Red Hot Chili Peppers and Thom Yorke’s Atoms for Peace, brings the groove. Born in Milan in 1972 and trained at the Florence conservatory, Bollani moves freely between jazz, classical and Brazilian music. He has recorded for ECM since 2003, has played with Chick Corea, Enrico Rava and Richard Galliano, and in 2023 won the David di Donatello for his score for the film Il pataffio. Italian audiences also know him from television, as host of Via dei Matti n. 0 on Rai 3.