Bergamo Film Meeting opens Bergamo Jazz
Sunday, March 15

Leftovers of Balera
exhibition in memory of Gianni Bergamelli
from Wednesday, March 18

Bergamo Jazz 2026 is warming up its engines before its official start scheduled for Thursday, March 19. And like every year, the Festival will embrace other artistic languages, starting with cinema. On Sunday, March 15, in fact, the usual handover from Bergamo Film Meeting to Bergamo Jazz is scheduled at the Auditorium in Piazza della Libertà (5:30 p.m.): on the occasion, violinist Virginia Sutera will soundtrack the film Gräfin Küchenfee(The scullery maid turned countess) by Rudolf Biebrach, a 1918 comedy starring actress Henny Porten, who is called upon to play two characters, a countess and her cook. This dual role brings out Porten’s comic gifts, especially in the scenes in which she imitates herself as Karoline in the role of the countess. The comic effect is multiplied: the scullery maid revels in imitating the already hysterical ways of the mistress, and Porten seems to enjoy playing the two characters endlessly. The device of mistaken identity, combined with witty dialogue, results in a lively and entertaining comedy.
Always interested in the encounter between music and other arts, Virginia Sutera is one of the leading personalities of today’s improvised music scene. She graduated from the Milan Conservatory of Music with a thesis dedicated to improvisation, delving into the figure of English composer Cornelius Cardew in the work of The Great Learning. She created the Tuscany Music Revolution project and formed artistic partnerships with, among others, accordionist Sara Calvanelli, pianists Alberto Braida and Ermanno Novali.

The dialogue between music and the visual arts will also be the focus of the exhibition that Bergamo Jazz is dedicating to Gianni Bergamelli, the painter and musician who passed away last August: the exhibition, titled Avanzi di Balera, will be hosted at the Donizetti Studio, opposite the theater’s box office, and will open on Wednesday, March 18 (6 p.m.; open to the public from 6:30 p.m.). The exhibition will also be open from Thursday, March 19 to Sunday, March 22 from 6:30 p.m. until 8:30 p.m.
Gianni Bergamelli was an important figure in Bergamo’s jazz life, also in the guise of pianist alongside Gianluigi Trovesi, his fraternal friend, and many other musicians. In particular, his pictorial art remains an example of the visionary blending and meeting of painting and music: Gianni Bergamelli often collaborated with Bergamo Jazz, signing the posters for numerous editions of the Festival. The exhibition features a selection of recent works: the title Avanzi di Balera (Leftovers from the Ballera ) is what the Nembro artist himself had thought of for one of his exhibitions.
Painter by profession, pianist by pleasure: this is how Gianni Bergamelli could be defined. But actually first there was music, at first “dance” music and then jazz, and then came painting: his first solo exhibition was in 1968, at the Via della Spiga Gallery in Milan. From the age of 35 onward, in Bergamelli’s artistic life the canvas has indeed prevailed over the score, although the piano has never quite been put away in the attic. In both cases Gianni Bergamelli has put in a great, infinite passion, a desire to mix the cards to the point that in his painting jazz is invariably present, to be translated into gesture, into color, into living matter. In bringing his paintings to life, Gianni Bergamelli has made use of car body paints, also giving himself to collage, using old photographs (in black and white). The result is almost an invitation to “touch” the painting to try to live the same experience as the author, to enter into a relationship with him. Often, jazz is also like this: it is music that solicits in the listener a “contact” with the person who makes it, to feel that he or she is participating in the creative act. Perhaps it is also for this reason that many jazz musicians – for example, the Swiss Daniel Humair, a friend of Bergamelli himself, Ornette Coleman, Bill Dixon, Giorgio Gaslini – have also chosen to express themselves through painting. In the guise of pianist, Gianni Bergamelli has performed several times as part of the Bergamo jazz festival. He was also one of the pillars, along with journalist Paolo Arzano and others, of the Associazione Bergamasca del Jazz (ABJ), which brought jazz to the small hall of the San Bartolomeo Cultural Center.