Italian Jazz Singer Chiara Izzi at Kennedy Center
By Nancy DeSanti
Italian jazz singer Chiara Izzi on May 3 came to the Kennedy Center’s Millennium Stage by way of New York and was warmly welcomed by an enthusiastic audience. The talented performer sang in four languages (Italian, English, Spanish and Portuguese) as part of the Kennedy Center’s “Unexpected Italy” series, in cooperation with the Embassy of Italy and the National Italian American Foundation. Originally from Campobasso, Molise, Chiara Izzi’s warm, Mediterranean voice has won her fans all over the world, recording contracts, and a first prize awarded by Quincy Jones at an important jazz festival.
At the Kennedy Center event, she was accompanied by internationally known pianist Kevin Hays. She had first met Hays in Italy in 2006, while he was playing in Campobasso. After the concert, Izzi, then a university student majoring in communications and media who was beginning her career as a professional musician, asked him to sign her copy of his CD.
Later the Italian singer became a bandleader based in Rome and made her international debut at the 2011 Montreux International Jazz Festival Vocal Competition, where Quincy Jones awarded her first prize. (The Montreux festival, on the shores of Lake Geneva in Switzerland, is the second largest annual jazz festival in the world after Canada’s Montreal International Jazz Festival).
With the award came the 2012 recording session that generated her debut album, “Motifs,” which included lyrics in English, Italian, Spanish and Portuguese. But Izzi’s goal was New York City. She made the move in August 2014. Not long afterward, she was playing with Hays at a midtown Manhattan club. It was the beginning of a fruitful collaboration, which was apparent to her audience at the Kennedy Center. Enzo Capua, the producer of her second album
“Across the Sea,” first met Chiara at a musical festival in Rome about seven years ago and ended up collaborating with her in New York after she relocated there in 2014. Capua has said he believes that it was crucial for Izzi to sing and include Italian songs in her album, like “Viaggio Elegiaco” where Izzi contributed to Hays’ music with Italian songwriting. But even when writing in English, Capua said With her vocal talent, warm personality and confident stage presence, this Molisana singer, known as the “jazz singer with the Mediterranean voice,” seems well on her way to a big international career.