On the island of Salina, the tenth edition of the Salina Jazz Festival celebrates the legacy of its founder Clara Rametta while placing young musicians at the heart of its future.
Clara Rametta
There are places where music does more than fill the air. It becomes part of the landscape, carried by the wind, reflected in the sea and woven into the rhythm of everyday life.
Salina is one of those places.
From 18 to 20 September 2026, the small Aeolian island will host the 10th edition of the Salina Jazz Festival, bringing three days of performances, encounters and musical exploration to Malfa. This anniversary edition carries a particular emotional weight: it is dedicated to the memory of Clara Rametta, the woman whose vision and passion helped establish the Festival and shape Malfa as a place where culture could take root and flourish.
Yet this is not a celebration looking backwards.
On the contrary, the tenth edition is deliberately focused on what comes next. Young musicians will occupy a central place in the programme, taking the stage at Palazzo Marchetti and bringing new voices, ideas and musical languages to an event built over the years on the meeting between tradition and experimentation.
In this sense, the Festival’s anniversary becomes something larger than a milestone. It becomes a moment of transition: a way of honouring the past by investing in the future.
Clara Rametta and her daughter Martina and her son Luca Caruso
In the Name of Clara Rametta
Clara Rametta devoted a significant part of her life to culture and to the promotion of Malfa. As founder of the Didime 90 Association and the Salina Jazz Festival, she helped create a cultural environment capable of welcoming artists, musicians, ideas and new projects to the island.
Her work was not simply about organising concerts. It was about creating connections — between people and places, between artists and audiences, and between the extraordinary beauty of Salina and the transformative power of culture.
Over the years, that vision became part of the island’s cultural identity.
Today, her son Luca Caruso, a member of the Festival’s board, symbolically carries that legacy forward.
For the tenth edition, this passing of the torch takes on a particularly powerful meaning. Memory is not presented as a monument or a conclusion, but as a starting point: a set of roots from which something new can continue to grow.
“This tenth edition represents an important milestone, but above all a new starting point,” says Riccardo Insolia, President of the Didime 90 Association. “The Festival was born from Clara Rametta’s extraordinary intuition and passion, and today we feel a responsibility to preserve that vision while looking ahead. The presence of so many young musicians is a fundamental choice for us. We want to offer them an important stage, a genuine opportunity and a space where they can express their talent and engage with an audience. Culture has meaning when it can generate a future and when it knows how to place its trust in new generations. This is what we want to do with the Salina Jazz Festival.”
For Luca Caruso, the continuity is deeply personal.
“Being part of the Festival’s board and seeing this tenth edition take shape means, for me, symbolically carrying on my mother’s legacy,” he explains. “Clara left a profound mark on the cultural life of Malfa, and the best way to honour her memory is to continue what she believed in. The Festival must keep growing, renewing itself and, above all, creating space for young people. Seeing so many young musicians take the stage at Palazzo Marchetti, with the opportunity to express themselves and engage with artists and audiences, is perhaps the most beautiful sign that this story continues. A memory that becomes energy for the future.”
It is an idea that sits at the heart of this year’s Festival: the past provides the roots, but the future belongs to those willing to take the stage.
When an Island Becomes Part of the Music
The relationship between music and place has always been central to the identity of the Salina Jazz Festival.
Palazzo Marchetti is not simply a venue. Nor is Salina merely a picturesque backdrop.
The island is part of the experience.
Palazzo Marchesi
The deep blue of the Mediterranean, the green of the vineyards and terraces, the scent of Mediterranean vegetation, the changing light, the wind and the extraordinary silence of the island all contribute to the atmosphere in which the music is heard.
Jazz feels particularly at home in such a landscape.
Its instinct for improvisation, dialogue and transformation mirrors the character of an island that is constantly changing with the light, the weather and the sea.
This connection becomes especially powerful during the Festival’s sunrise concerts. At six-thirty in the morning, before the island has fully awakened, music emerges alongside the first light of day. The sea, the sky and the sound of the instruments become part of a single, almost cinematic experience.
Palazzo Marchetti
It is a distinctive way of experiencing jazz: not separated from its surroundings, but immersed in them.
The Salina Jazz Festival grew out of the more than twenty-year collaboration between Clara Rametta and Giuseppe Urso, who continues to serve as its artistic director. Their shared vision helped create an event in which artistic quality and the character of the island could exist in constant dialogue.
Giuseppe Urso
Three Days, Different Generations, One Musical Journey
The tenth edition opens on Friday, 18 September, at Palazzo Marchetti.
At 8:00 pm, Giuseppe Urso on piano, Antonio Alaimo on double bass and Andrea Mortillaro on drums will perform Music for Piano Trio, a meeting built around research, interplay and freedom of expression.
At 9:30 pm, Big Papa & The Kids will take the stage, bringing together Fabio Lannino on bass and double bass with the younger generation represented by Tommaso Lannino on piano and Foresta Francesco Jr on drums.
The result is a musical dialogue across generations — an appropriate beginning for an edition devoted to both memory and renewal.
On Saturday, 19 September, the day begins at 6:30 am at the Port of Santa Marina with Music at Sunrise.
As the island slowly wakes, the music becomes part of the morning landscape.
The evening programme returns to Palazzo Marchetti at 8:00 pm with Chiara Minaldi and Giorgia Meli in Duo, two vocalists revisiting the great jazz standards in an intimate musical journey.
At 9:30 pm, La Salamanca – Latin Project will bring together jazz and Latin rhythms, creating a space for musical crossover and contemporary interpretation, with a line-up featuring a new generation of highly talented musicians.
Sunday, 20 September, begins once again with the sunrise.
At 6:30 am at the Port of Malfa, pianist Tommaso Lannino will accompany the island’s awakening. It is one of the Festival’s most intimate moments: a piano, the first light of the day and the Mediterranean stretching towards the horizon.
The evening returns to Palazzo Marchetti.
At 8:30 pm, the Simone Rumolo / Vincenzo Capuano Duo will bring another encounter between young talents, on drums and saxophone.
The Festival closes at 9:30 pm with Kolne Trio / Naya, presenting the premiere of Obession.
The final performance once again reflects the Festival’s desire to look forward — towards experimentation, new collaborations and unexplored musical territories.
Palazzo Marchetti: A Stage for the Next Generation
At the centre of the evening programme is Palazzo Marchetti, Malfa’s historic venue for cultural events and concerts.
This year, however, the stage takes on an additional meaning.
For the young musicians performing there, the Festival is not simply another concert. It is an opportunity to be heard.
An important stage can become the first step in an artistic journey — the moment when an emerging musician encounters an audience, tests new ideas and discovers what it means to communicate through performance.
Giving young artists that opportunity is therefore not an accessory to the Festival’s programme. It is part of its cultural mission.
The Salina Jazz Festival seeks to create a space where tomorrow’s artists can begin telling their stories today.
And in doing so, it continues one of Clara Rametta’s most enduring ideas: that culture can generate possibilities, build communities and create a future.
The Landscape as a Musical Partner
There is another protagonist in this story: Salina itself.
The island’s landscape changes constantly. The intense blue of the sea gives way to the green of vineyards and terraces; the warm light of sunset slowly disappears; Mediterranean scents rise from gardens and vegetation; the wind moves across the hills.
Even silence seems to have its own rhythm.
This is why the sunrise concerts have become such an essential part of the Festival’s identity.
At 6:30 in the morning, when the island is still suspended between night and day, the music does not compete with the landscape. It enters into conversation with it.
Jazz becomes part of the scenery, while the scenery becomes part of the jazz.
Perhaps this is the most authentic expression of what the Salina Jazz Festival has sought to achieve over its ten-year journey: to bring music into the life of the island rather than simply bringing an island into the setting of a music festival.
Ten Years On, Looking Ahead
The tenth edition of the Salina Jazz Festival is therefore more than an anniversary.
It is a reflection on what it means to build a cultural legacy — and on what it takes to keep that legacy alive.
It is the memory of Clara Rametta and her belief in culture as a force capable of transforming a place.
It is the continuation of a journey begun decades ago.
It is the symbolic passing of a torch to a new generation.
It is a commitment to young musicians and to the possibilities that can emerge when they are given a meaningful stage.
And it is a celebration of Salina itself: an island where music, nature and culture can meet in unexpected ways.
For three days in September, Malfa will once again become a place of encounters — between established musicians and emerging voices, between memory and innovation, between the stillness of the island and the freedom of jazz.
Ten years of history, with the gaze firmly directed towards tomorrow.
In Clara’s name. In the heart of Salina. And with the future in sight.
Because memory preserves the roots.
But it is the next generation that makes the branches grow towards the sky.
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