Winter Jazz in Medieval Orvieto: Usually

Even “freddo polare” (“polar cold” – which for Italy means anything below freezing temperature) – never deters jazz appassionati from heading to Orvieto at the end of December for Umbria Jazz Winter. We’re always there, too, celebrating our December 30th wedding anniversary.

But not this year: COVID has voided Umbria Jazz Winter for December, 2020.

Medieval Orvieto – perched on a tufo rock plateau – will be eerily silent during the last three days of 2020 and the first day of 2021. Over a hundred concerts performed by over 150 top jazz musicians will not resound this year in Orvieto where the Umbria Jazz Winter concerts usually animate the 18th-century frescoed theater, Teatro Mancinelli….

…and the 14th-c. city hall, Palazzo del Popolo:

And foot-stomping, applauding groups of families and friends won’t be gathered around the Florentine brass band, Funk Off, as they blare out catchy music just in front of that tufo-rock medieval building…..

….and lead their fans – leaping, spinning, dancing while playing – through Orvieto’s winding medieval backstreets….

….right to Orvieto’s magnficent Duomo:

We’ll miss those memorable jazz lunches and jazz dinners in the vaulted restored refectory of a Franciscan monastery, where contemplative friars would have shared their meals in gently muted conversation in the 14th-century – or in silence.

In that former refectory during Umbria Jazz Winter, meals are shared to the notes of great jazz, with clapping and foot-stomping punctuating the courses.