Apulian Legends & Lombard Birds | Event 2026

January 8, 2026, 5:30 p.m

Purely geographically, these two albums from Italy are separated by more than a thousand kilometers, as one is located in the extreme north of Lombardy, while the other is in the southeastern corner of Puglia, at the very bottom and back of the heel of the Italian boot. But alongside double bassist Ferdinando Romano, who plays on both, these albums share a very similar artistic spirit: listening to the sounds of nature and the stories that surround us, and listening to what these make resonate within us.

Both Romano and trumpeter Tommaso Iacoviello draw the essence of their music from this. Both are among the most important young personalities in Italian jazz. “The Legends of Otranto” by Ferdinando Romano is a suite in six movements inspired by legends about magical natural places and art-historical treasures in the Apulian city of Otranto and its surroundings.

The album “Birds” by Tommaso Iacoviello, on the other hand, is an invitation, actually a request, to pay more attention to the sounds of the nature that surrounds us, and he does exactly that himself, including in Valsolda on the northern shore of Lake Lugano in the province of Como. Bird sounds and their distinctive repetitive patterns form the starting point for Iacoviello’s compositions and the improvisations based on them.

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