Per amor di cifra tonda, si ricordano a partire da oggi i trent'anni del magnifico Mike Westbrook Music Festival che si tenne dal 24 al 26 luglio 1992 in pieno centro cittadino a Catania, dopo la messa in forse per motivi di sicurezza e un rocambolesco cambio di sede nei giorni immmediatamente sucessivi alla strage di via D'Amelio. L'evento è stato richiamato in anni recenti nel doppio cd intitolato appunto Catania, dopo il ritrovamento - anch'esso abbastanza rocambolesco - di alcuni documenti audio relativi ai concerti delle tre serate.
Non che Mike abbia tempo di esser molto nostalgico, con tutto quello che ha in ballo in questo periodo, ma l'occasione di dedicarvi un pensiero si è presentata anche di recente parlando con Stuart Nicholson di Jazzwise: "Pompeo Benincasa and Marcello Leanza, very good friends of ours in Catania, in Sicily, where we had played various projects, amazingly offered to do a festival of just my own music – basically whatever I wanted to play. They came to London, we discussed it and I said, ‘Well, what I’d most like to do is get everybody together, not only the regular band, but a few guests and things like that', and their faces fell at the enormous cost of doing this. They went away and several months later came back, ‘Well, we’ve got the money!’ So then, a long period of preparation for three different nights of music! A huge undertaking.” "And a huge honour too", aggiunge Kate. Her husband had been close to tears thinking about it. But in the best tradition of prophets without honour, no similar commission to date has been undertaken in the UK. But even if it was proposed, where in his busy schedule would it be fitted in? “There’s always ongoing work with the small groups of one kind or another, and the big band, that carries on, and every now and again, in parallel with that, there’s been a major project of some kind. You have to adapt to situations and I think that’s what keeps us moving, really. It’s a response to the changing world, you have to find something that works now!”
https://www.westbrookjazz.co.uk/catania_cd
https://www.westbrookjazz.co.uk/catania/index