Locus Festival 2014 – live jazz music in Puglia
Locus festival is a brilliant free music event now in it’s 11th year. It takes place in the tiny but gorgeous town of Locorotondo in Puglia, a region in southern Italy. Sitting above the plain around it, the view from this white-painted town is a perfect backdrop to drink some of their famous wines and explore the winding little alleys on foot.
Great landscape photo of Locorotondo by Flickr user pululante
The focus of the festival are international and Italian Jazz artists, who each play an evening in Locorotondo’s main square. So expect to attend specific nights depending who you want to hear play. This year I listened to the beautiful sounds of Laura Mvula from the UK and Gregory Porter from the US on consecutive nights.
The square where the artists perform is wrapped up by the town itself, and the centre is completely pedestrianised, reserving the pretty streets only for the music and the crowd. The mainly Italian spectators gathered quickly to fill the square and soak up the jazz tunes for a couple of hours, completely for free.
A still of the crowd in Locorotondo taken from the Official Trailer Video on youtube
As well as a string of dates in summer, they also have a winter edition of the festival which happened in 2014 between Christmas Day and New Year.
You can see the impression Locus festival in the summer left on me in the video I produced below, and also read how Kash experienced the same place. In the video, I’ve mixed the live performances with a few beautiful shots of Puglia as I saw it during a road trip along the coast.
It’s hard not to love a coast as gorgeous as Puglia! Swimming in the bright blue and turquoise waters was the highlight for me, as well as seeing Laura Mvula and Gregory Porter in such an intimate venue.
Peter Parkorr
