Cassandra Wilson, David Sanborn, Stefano di Battista, Joe Locke

Cassandra Wilson and David Sanborn were the main attractions here last night in Perugia - after torrential rain during the afternoon the skies cleared just in time for the evening performance at the Arena Santa Guilliana.

Cassandra opened the show and with her smooth vocals and excellent band she gave a terrific show - outstanding was her haunting and really slow version of Glen Campbell's' 'Witchita Lineman' and her opening choice 'Caravan'.

David Sanborn played some excellent bop and blues and with his Italian brass section went down excellently with the home crowd - St Louis Blues, Basin Street Blues and Smile were great and the band were allowed plenty of space to show their stuff. Like Bill Frisell, Sanborn is re-discovering his roots and influences.


Later at the Midnight show Stefano di Battista and Flavio Boltro let rip and ran through a succession of hot numbers that the home crowd 'whooped and hollered' after every solo (and quite rightly too!). This is a great band - lets hope it comes to the UK.

We ended the evening at the 1am show with Joe Locke in the Rocco Paulina - this is a fantastic quartet, drummer Jonathan Blake is outstanding - one of those drummers who gets maximum sound from minimum exertion, with his low set kit his hands just rock from side to side to great effect. The whole ethos and purpose of this band seems to be of maximum enjoyment of both musicians and audience and having now seen two shows they are really succeeding.