Umbria Jazz Festival 2015 with Paolo Conte and Lady GaGa AND the Italian Super Bowl in Milano

Another catch up post on our two trips to the Umbrian Jazz Festival in Perugia. It is just an hour train ride to Perugia, but the concerts ended at 11:30 so we couldn't get a train back and stayed overnight in Perugia, which allowed us to hear some late night jazz on the free concert stage and to attempt to eat at our favorite Perugia  restaurant, Ubu Re (they were excited to see us and we were chatting for about 10 minutes with the waitress/co-owner when suddenly her husband, the cook, suffered a detached retina and had to rush to the hospital!  We were the only guests, so they apologized profusely and closed the restaurant.  Fortunately he has recovered and is back at work.)

Paolo Conte is a former bankruptcy attorney turned jazz singer/songwriter and is hugely popular in Italy.  The crowd at that concert was mostly 50+ year old Italians (except for the dour German couple seated next to us who smoked the whole time and complained that he didn't sing any songs in English or German!)  Paolo Conte is 78 and going strong, he did a 90 minute set without any breaks.  His big hit in Italy (and used in a commercial in the U.S.) is "Via Con Me" (Come with me). He brought the house down with that song.  Here is a link to a You Tube ricording of Paolo Conte singing Via Con Me with Fred & Ginger dancing, it works surprisingly well:   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0o_rGhcBgME  (just copy and paste into your browser).

Paolo Conte singing Via Con Me

Lady GaGa and Tony Bennett the following week attracted a different crowd--an average age of around 30, with lots of teens and 20 somethings, despite the high cost of the tickets (105 euros for the cheapest seats).  I wondered if the teens knew this would be a jazz performance, but they seemed to know the song she recorded with Bennett and burst into applause every time she appeared in a new costume--there were at least a dozen costume changes for her, Tony managed to make it through in the same dinner jacket.

Singing La Vie en Rose

Encore of The Lady is a Tramp

As if the jazz festival wasn't excitement enough, we also went to the Italian Super Bowl--yes, Italy has american football. We saw both the semi-final and the final game at the bicycle stadium in Milan, where there was also an "American Festival" for the Fourth of July.  The American Festival seemed to be a mechanical bull and hamburgers, plus Coors beer.  We opted for Moretti, an italian brand.  The teams were tiny compared to US teams, and the age range for one team was from 17 to 50!  All but 2 of the players were Italian, one team (the winners) had an American quarterback and American receiver.  Surprisingly, the kicking game was horrible--I had expected that kicking would be decent given they probably all grew up playing soccer.  But no, the kickers were so bad both teams always went for it on fourth down and nobody made a field goal.  Still, it was fun to watch football (American) in Italy, and the burgers weren't bad.  Plus. they had a female ref which I liked.  She was apparently was the first female to be a ref in the NBA and was imported for the game.  We sat next to a couple of Milanese who had never seen a game so we had an opportunity to practice speaking Italian while explaining the game.  All of the football terms are in English (kickoff, first down, touchdown, etc.), which made it easy.  Now we can say we have been to a superbowl game.

only about 150-200 people in the stands, we were the only Americans as far
as we could tell

halftime show, one singer and the middle-high school age cheerleaders

Viva il football americano!