The countdown for Umbria Jazz Winter has officially started: there are 2 weeks left for the Umbria Jazz Winter jazz event which, like every year, will offer an interesting mix of international musicians and Italian artists who will enliven the historic center of the city of Orvieto between the old year and the new, between 28 December 2022 and 1 January 2023.

Umbria Jazz Winter #29 starts on December 28th “with tomorrow’s jazz”, declares the organization. And we couldn’t be more proud to find as the first concert of the Festival – with free admission – the winners of the Conad Jazz Contest 2022, the Five Angry Men!

The band, born within the walls of Siena Jazz and grown thanks also to the performances on the stages of Umbria Jazz last July in Perugia, Jazz per le Terre dei Sisma and UJ Weekend in recent months respectively in L’Aquila and Terni, will exhibit **on December 28, at 4 pm, at the Palazzo del Popolo, in Sala 400 – with admission is free **.

The quintet made up of Lorenzo Simoni on saxophone, Giacomo Serino on trumpet, Pierpaolo Zenni on piano, Matteo Bonti on double bass and Mauro Patti on drums, its distinctive character is the desire to experiment with new languages starting from tradition, with a repertoire that ranges from free jazz, hard bop and modern jazz.

Over the past few weeks, we’ve gotten to know some of their tunes:

“Melted Princess“, by Lorenzo Simoni, saxophonist of the Five Angry Men, is an original composition with a modern and frenetic character, with clear inspirations from contemporary jazz and more traditional sub-genres such as bebop. The piece was performed for the first time in Terni in the context of Umbria Jazz Weekend and sees Pierpaolo Zenni and Lorenzo Simoni as soloists.

“Bibbirría” by Mauro Patti, drummer of the Five Angry Men, is a small suite, of which the band performed the intro (a 6/8 ridden “à la McCoy Tyner”) at the live performance of Umbria Jazz Weekend at the Baravai Roman Amphitheater in Terni on 18/09. The composition is titled and dedicated to an ancient historic district of the city of Agrigento, the city of origin of Patti, which has always been the cradle of Arab populations.

“Ubik”, by PIerpaolo Zenni, pianist of the Five Angry Men, is a piece structured as a small three-part suite, whose final theme is rather inspired by the music of Mingus. The title is a tribute to Philip K. Dick’s novel of the same name.

“Sekkio”, another song by Zenni, has ironic tones and was born during a bus trip. The title refers to a famous scene from the film “The Meaning of Life” by Monty Python. The song was performed in L’Aquila during “Jazz for the lands of the earthquake”.

“La Marcia dei Coleopteri“, by the trumpeter of the group, Giacomo Serino, has a name inspired by the martial but ironic character of the piece, which incorporates atonal melodic elements with harmonic progressions deriving from classical music. He’s one of the group’s “strong points”, and it’s not uncommon to hear this song live.

Follow the Five Angry Men through the official pages of Conad Jazz Contest on [Instagram] (https://www.instagram.com/conadjazzcontest/) and [Facebook] (https://www.facebook.com/ConadJazzContest)