Sonny Rollins and Perugia’s Umbria Jazz: Giving Back the Italian Passione

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He could only hobble across the stage, head of fuzzy white hair bobbing, sax clutched in a strong gnarled fist. The knees and hips of Sonny Rollins – soon to be eighty-two – might be worn out, but not his lungs. He barely stopped for a breather – I saw him sip some water once – in nearly two hours on stage at Perugia’s open air arena, Santa Giuliana. And the more the Umbria Jazz crowds deliriously shouted “Sony, Sony” (no, not a typo – but the Italian pronunciation of “Sonny”), the wilder, the more intricate, the more powerful those trills on the sax.
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Isola di Giannutri, “Fuori dal Mondo”

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Fuori dal mondo – “out of this world” – is what you feel as you step off the ferry onto this tiny Mediterranean island. The turquoise/emerald water of the island coves is certainly “out of this world” but you are “out of this world” touching down on this island with 180 houses (hidden away – we only saw about six in our three days here), fewer than twenty permanent residents, only one small piazza with a single restaurant-bar (mostly empty), one meagerly-stocked grocery (never did find it open) and only dirt paths leading to the two or three coves of chrystalline water.
At a fork in the footpaths, the only three signs on the island indicate the swimmable coves and the warning that no one may verge off the footpaths from early May until late October unless accompanied by an authorized naturalist guide.
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