Songs for Distingué Lovers | Jazz Insight

On Wednesday, November 5, at 6:00 p.m., the International Museum and Library of Music opens Jazz Insight — the history of jazz seen “from the inside” — with a concert dedicated to Billie Holiday.

A musical narration with Emiliano Pintori (piano).
Special guests: Eloisa Atti (vocals) and Matteo Raggi (tenor sax).
A project by Emiliano Pintori for the Museum of Music, in collaboration with the Bologna Jazz Festival.

The event is dedicated to the legendary Billie Holiday (Eleanora Fagan, Philadelphia, April 7, 1915 – New York, July 17, 1959*).
Over the years, numerous myths have surrounded the figure of Lady Day, many of them difficult to dispel (not least the controversial 2021 film “The United States vs. Billie Holiday”).
Holiday herself contributed to this mythology through her famous autobiography “Lady Sings the Blues,” yet her life truly contained all the elements of a tragic legend: a childhood and youth marked by poverty and abuse, an astonishing and sudden artistic debut, success, violence, addiction, imprisonment, decline, and death at only 44 years of age.

But to view Billie Holiday only through this lens is misleading: she transformed the history of jazz, redefined the role of the singer by transfiguring the sound and text of Tin Pan Alley songs, and was a master of irony, detachment, and relaxed phrasing — pointing to a stylistic path that remains extraordinarily relevant today.
Finally, Billie was not merely a victim; she played a fundamental and emblematic role in the struggle for self-determination of African American women.

Guest performers for the evening include Eloisa Atti, a singer who has long devoted herself to Holiday’s repertoire, together with Matteo Raggi, her frequent collaborator and one of Italy’s leading tenor saxophonists in the tradition defined by artists such as Ben Webster and Lester Young.