Umbria Jazz Inverno

Have you ever been to Umbria Jazz? The winter version in Orvieto? If you need any one single reason to get busy finding plane tickets to Umbria during the holiday season - feel free to use the Umbria Jazz Inverno Excuse. It is truly worth the trip itself. Summer visitors don¹t have to be in Umbria long before they start hearing about the original Umbria Jazz Festival that takes place in Perugia10 days straight, every summer. Umbria Jazz Inverno is its equivalent, but takes place towards the end of December in Orvieto.

Some wise person figured that if one Umbria Jazz Festival is good, two would be better. And it is. First of all, the winter version is held in Orvieto and Orvieto, like Perugia, is on our "A List" of not-well-known-but-not-to-be-missed cities of Italy. Forget Rome and Venice. Remember Perugia, and Orvieto. Especially when it¹s time for either session of Umbria Jazz. (Yes, there was even a third Cortona version, but after a couple years someone figured out Cortona is still in Tuscany and that was the end of that.)

Orvieto, on the other hand, is firmly in Umbria and it is a vivacious, elegant hilltop town about an hour north of Rome. Even from a great distance you can see it is dominated by a great, striped marble cathedral. Stepping inside you can see it is filled with world renowned, newly restored Signorelli frescos. Even though I went to art school, I¹m definitely not the kind of tourist that goes around dragging friends and family into every last cold, dark church on the peninsula. Having said that, I have to admit the Signorellis are super. And so is the rest of the town. Just an excellent place to explore. Orvieto¹s streets are lined with intimate stores of local crafts, hand made papers, iron and ceramics. There are good restaurants, and friendly, engaging people that strangely haven¹t yet suffered tourist burn-out. Always a pleasant destination, we like to take out-of-town friends there for a day trips any time of year.

Honestly, wonderful as Orvieto is, I might not have thought of going there on an overcast day between Christmas and New Years. But I had had such good experiences with the summer version of Umbria Jazz, I thought "perche no?" and went off with our 25 year old son. Zak.

We had no tickets in our hands, we just showed up on Orvieto¹s doorstep and said "we¹re here!" And then we proceeded to go to whatever concerts were available when we were. They rocked our new holiday socks off, if you can say that Jazz rocked. We saw a cool American quartet that was as amazing as the venue they played in - a big stone hall of a castle it appeared. I remember that it was warm inside, the stones glowed, lit by hyper modern and ultra chic Italian lighting, the acoustics were excellent, the seats plush, the setting intimate (maybe 200 people). The next concert we stumbled onto started shortly after the first one and was only a couple of buildings away. What could be easier? It was an Italian jazz combo I hadn¹t heard of before. I wish I could remember their name, because the music was so beautiful, the setting so unreal, that it actually brought tears to my eyes. The whole thing just totally took me away, to another, higher place, and I was glad to have been there.

Just being on the streets of the city was a rush with big, bright brass sounds blasting out of one palazzo and getting tangled up with the blues coming out of the building across the street. And the streets! The holiday festival scene was unforgettable. One of that year¹s hits was a big southern gospel group and I remember clusters of elegant black ladies in high heels, full length furs, pearls and wonderful, tall, swept up, formal hairdos, all coming together from different corners of the town to get to their next performance. Oh, the streets were just a swarming. Musicians between acts, rushing here and there, some with instruments still under their arms, every kind of language being spoken, music in the air, decorations in the store windows, the smells of cooking drifting through the opening and closing restaurant doors... could we have fallen into a more exciting winter day? I could not recommend it more.

The festival usually starts after Christmas and has a New Years Day finale. The minute by minute schedule is on the web: www.umbriajazz.com. Since we did so well the last time, I wouldn¹t stress about the tickets. But, that¹s just me. Maybe we were naïve and lucky. If you do get tickets in advance, great. If not, I¹d still do what we did and try just showing up. Even if you don¹t get into a single concert, it will be safe to bet you will enjoy the music scene in Orvieto!

About the Author: Stew Vreeland is the artistic director of an advertising agency. Once a client of Umbria Rentals, he liked the area so much be bought a place of his own. He spends his time between Maine and Panicale, and runs the real estate website See You in Italy.

Happy December Holidays in Umbria!