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BELLINZONA BLUES SESSIONS - FREE OPEN AIR FESTIVAL
NO TICKET NEEDED!!!

BOBBY RUSH BAND - European exclusive
RICK ESTRIN & THE NIGHTCATS - European exclusive
JOHNNY RAWLS & THE ÖZDEMIRS feat THE LONDON HORNS, DESTINY RAWLS and ALBERTO MARSICO - European exclusive
NORTH MISSISSIPPI ALLSTARS - Swiss exclusive
ZAC HARMON BAND feat. TEXAS SLIM
GUY DAVIS & FABRIZIO POGGI
WASHBOARD CHAZ & THE JUNKERS
BAYOU MOONSHINERS
...and more!!!

Don't miss the this totally free blues summer event!!!
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The main event of the Coopaso Music Events is, as always, the open air festival in Piazza Governo in Bellinzona which this year will take place June 22 to 24, organized by Coopaso.
BELLINZONA BLUES SESSIONS is back for the 3rd year with a free entry formula. 12 concerts over three days with some of the best artists of the world's blues scene.
For the edition 2017 Coopaso increased financial commitment to improve even more the organization and the offer of both artistic and logistical structures to live and enjoy to the public and to our guests and musicians the best possible experience during the three days of the festival.
It is thanks to our generous sponsors who believe and support the activities of Coopaso
we can offer free events of international caliber and with an highly professional organization.
Piazza Governo will set up a festival village with different thematic areas: food area with different specialties, wine & beer bar, Paso Bar, off stage musical aperitif, main stage for evening concerts, coverage for the public to ensure the conduct of concerts even in bad weather, markets, kids & fun area and much more.

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EXCLUSIVE GUEST AREA / BACKSTAGE
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This year it will be set up a Guest exclusive area with an entrance fee, to experience the festival in a privileged area, in a refined setting in detail with exclusive services (private platform / stage to enjoy the concert "at the forefront", backstage access, welcome drink, dinner with table service and reserved sitting seats, ...).
Places are limited. Presale c / o Regional Tourism Organization - Bellinzonese and Upper Ticino, Tel. 091 825 21 31. www.bellinzonaturismo.ch

Other initiatives and further information about the festival will be announced during the press conference to be held in early June.

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PROGRAMM
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Thursday 22.06.
18.30 – 19.45 Blues aperò (off stage): Enea Tamburini & Zoe Staubli
20.00 – 21.45 (main stage): SOUTH SWITZERLAND BLUES CONNECTION
22.00 – 23.45 (main stage): NORTH MISSISSIPPI ALLSTARS

Friday 23.06.
18.00 – 19.30 Blues aperò (off stage): Bayou Moonshiners
20.00 – 21.30 (main stage): GUY DAVIS & FABRIZIO POGGI
21.45 – 23.15 (main stage): RICK ESTRIN & THE NIGHTCATS (european exclusive)
23.30 – 01.00 (main stage): ZAC HARMON BAND

Saturday 24.06.
11.00 – 14.00 Blues Aperò (off stage)
19.00 – 20.30 Blues aperò (off stage): WASHBOARD CHAZ feat. Paul Venturi & The Junkers
21.00 – 22.45 (main stage): JOHNNY RAWLS & The Özdemirs feat. The London Horns
23.00 – 01.00 (main stage): BOBBY RUSH BAND (european exclusive)

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Concerts exclusively for Europe
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There are 2 concerts that Coopaso offers the public exclusively for Europe!
The concert that will close the third edition of Bellinzona Blues Festival will be a blues legend and recent winner of the 2017 Grammy Award for "Best Traditional Blues Album":
****Mr. BOBBY RUSH!**** Authentic legend of the black music for more than half a century, Bobby Rush is the king of the local R & B circuit (Chitli'n circuits), celebrated in Martin Scorsese's documentary "The Blues"
It contains in it its style elements of soul, blues, country, pop, "black", funk and R & B.
It's called folk-funk, a genre of which he is the only performer in the world. Bobby Rush has just recorded his new CD in New Orleans for Rounder Records produced by Scott Billington
with an all-star funk band which also includes guitarist Vasti Jackson, Joe Bonamassa, Keb Mo and Dave Alvin. The album "Porcupine Meat", published in September 2016, won the Grammy Awards in 2017 for Best Traditional Blues Album and is nominated for the Blues Music Awards 2017 to be held in May in Memphis.

Born in Louisiana 83 years ago, he still express the energy of a twenty year old when they play on stages around the world. Growing up in a rural environment where he learned the rudiments of the guitar and harmonica, Bobby Rush shifts in the mid-50s, like many musicians of those years, in the urban area of Chicago to start his musical career. Here he starts working with who are now considered the artists who made the history of urban blues Earl Hooker, Luther Allison, Freddy King, Muddy Waters, Howlin 'Wolf, Jimmy Reed, Little Walter, ..... In the years 60 form his own band and began to forge its own distinct style of funky blues.
Bobby Rush concert is presented by the company Cavieziel SA.

The program also includes another exclusive concert for Bellinzona Blues Sessions.
**** Rick Estrin & The Nightcats*****
Singer, composer, virtuoso harmonica player Rick Estrin was born in San Francisco, California in 1949, and as a boy he attended the Market Street area, where he came into contact with the music of Ray Charles, Jimmy Reed, Nina Simone, Champion Jack Dupree, and others, and when he started playing the harmonica at age 15, he was already immersed in the urban black culture around him. Even before the age of 18, Rick was already celebrated alongside artists like Lowell Fulson and Travis Phillips. Visiting Chicago, Estrin has worked with Eddie Taylor, Sam Lay, Johnny Young, Johnny Littlejohn, and Muddy Waters. Returning to the Bay Area, Estrin was a close friend of guitarist Charlie Baty, and formed Little Charlie & the Nightcats in 1976, an electric blues band that has been together for about 30 years.
Rick Estrin over the years has developed a brilliant harmonica style with her bubbly personality and a keen sense of humor, he has become a fantastic front man of consummate experience. When Baty left the band, Estrin, together with the longtime rhythm section Nightcats (J. Hansen and Lorenzo Farrell, and with the new guitarist Kid Anderson) continued his career under the name of Rick Estrin & The Nightcats, recording in 2012 a new album, again for the legendary Chicago label Alligator Records. Definitely Rick Estrin & The Nightcats is one of the best Bluesband of the current blues scene and a reference point of the contemporary West Coast Blues.

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The program in detail:
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Thursday 22 June
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The opening concert of the festival will be entrusted to the blues of our homeland. A formation created specifically for our festival, the SWITZERLAND SOUTH BLUES CONNECTION.
The southern part of Switzerland, Ticino, is a land of blues. Bellinzona Blues Sessions has decided to celebrate the blues of Southern Switzerland Ticino proposing some musicians to form a new ensemble that will bring on stage in Bellinzona a path between the various faces of the blues. Under the artistic leadership of bassist Federico Albertoni and his fellow blues with the trio "Drivin Mad" - Mad Cloak on guitar and Roberto Panzeri on drums - the South Switzerland Blues Connection will host some of the best known and appreciated blues musicians of our homeland as guitarists and singers Bat Battiston, Marco Marchi, Nick Schnider, Marcel Aeby, keyboardists Chris Arcioni and Claudio Bodini. This mixture of such diverse artists will create a brilliant succession of songs that celebrate the first great electric blues of Chicago, the British blues-seventies, and some new form of contemporary blues. The blues that characterizes the south of Switzerland, in fact.
The dances will open with an acoustic duo formed by the new proposals of the Ticino blues: Enea Tamburini and Zoe Staubli (the sixteen year old Zoe was in the national competition "Die größte Schweizer Talente" in 2016)
To close the first night of the festival a concert by typical hypnotic sounds like North Mississippi Hills Country Blues. To represent this genre the best and most famous contemporary exponents NORTH MISSISSIPPI ALLSTARS led by guitarist Luther Dickinson.
The formation, since the name and origin is immediately understand what it is made. The winning trio gained the consent of the public thanks to a southern rock crackling mix and blues, which takes the form of energetic and able to pump the adrenaline. On the Piazza you will waft the spirits of RL Burnside and Junior Kimbrough, who is the real humus of music and the NMA.
The North Mississippi Allstars will present both songs from the last "World Boogie Is Coming", both past extracts of their career. Some passages in ZZ Top’s style, a good dose of blues and direct rock but played with great class, are the calling card of this formation. Active for over 20 years, they have released 15 records, winning numerous awards including a Grammy nomination in 2001. The guitarist and singer Luther Dickinson, founder with his brother Cody of the North Mississippi Allstars, played for years in the BLACK CROWE training.

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Friday 23 june
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There will be 4 concerts for the second night of the festival! The notes will begin to resonate in the Piazza by 18 with an aperitif on the concert stage set off in the park adjacent to the seal fountain. To kick off the second evening will bethe group BAYOU Moonshiners, winners of the Italian Blues Challenge 2016 and rappresenting Italy at the European Blues Challenge in Denmark.
One of the best productions of the Italian Blues this year. The Bayou Moonshiners are Stephanie Ghizzoni (vocals, snare drum with brushes, washboard and kazoo) and Max Lazzarin (voice and piano), two leading-band artists from different musical backgrounds but with a common denominator: the love for the city of New Orleans. They interpret and write great, moving and nimbly music from blues to ragtime, from soul to gospel, touching in short, the best "New Orleans and Mardi Gras Music".


To open the concerts on the main stage will be instead an acoustic duo of great depth: GUY DAVIS and FABRIZIO POGGI. A partnership between the guitarist of New York and Italian harmonica player that has lasted for several years and that has led to 2 cd publications together. GUY DAVIS is a major contemporary exponent of the Blues sound made in the USA in the wake of Eric Bibb and Keb Mo. Davis's musical career takes flight in the early '90s when he signed for the prestigious Red House Records that affects 9 discs. Over the years he has worked for his records and his shows with T-Bone Wolk, Dr. John, Ian Anderson of Jethro Tull (who called him personally to open all of the shows on the tour of JT 2003), Eugenio Finardi and Pete Seeger ; Jackson Browne declares several times a huge fan of his. Honored at the Kennedy Center with Warren Beatty, John Williams and Elton John, Davis has received numerous nominations at the Blues Music Awards, including one for best album of the year with "Juba Dance" which was also the first for a long time in Hit parade Blues USA Top 50. He will be accompanied on harmonica by Fabrizio Poggi, Italian musician but American by adoption due to the numerous collaborations and concerts that often holds overseas (Poggi was among the first Italian artists to support long tour in the United States and played with artists from the worlds of blues, rock and singer-songwriters including Garth Hudson of the Band and Bob Dylan, the Blind Boys of Alabama, Marcia Ball, Zachary Richard, Flaco Jimenez, Charlie Musselwhite, John P. Hammond, Eric Bibb, The Blues Brothers Band, Otis Taylor and many others.). The actor and musician Dan Aykroyd, the Elwood Blues of the Blues Brothers, in his radio broadcast "TheBluesMobile" defined Fabrizio Poggi one extraordinary harmonica player. The third concert of the evening will host on European exclusive the Californian formation RICK Estrin & THE Nightcats (see description above).

Fourth and last act will be with ZAC BAND HARMON where he also plays the guitar Texas Slim.
Born and raised in the heart of Jackson, Mississippi, Zac Harmon is a true disciple of the Farish Street Blues, district known for the great blues legends who lived there such as Elmore James. It was influenced by blues great culture that gave off that area of town and by the neighbors, like his music teacher that housed his home Cab Calloway, Duke Ellington and Harry Belafonte or as Bill Farris who worked with Alan Lomax, and he founded the Center for the Study of Southern Culture. His mother played piano and his father, the first black pharmacist in that city and blues harmonica player, took care of the needs of artists such as Muddy Waters, BB King, Ike Turner, Tina Turner, Albert King, Little Milton, .... In this context steeped in culture and blues, Zac Harmon has developed his sense and taste in music.

He moved in the early 80s to Los Angeles to pursue his musical career, he starts working in establishing itself as a studio writer and producer.
In 2004, with his band, the Mid South Blues Revue, wins prestigious International Blues Challenge (IBC) as "Best Unsigned Band." His second work, The Blues According To Zachariah, highlighting its unique blend of blues, reggae, soul and gospel, the unmistakable sound of the guitar and sensational voice, was a great success among the major national radio stations including XM, Sirius and the American Blues Network. They give him a nomination for "Best New Blues Artist" to XM Nation Awards in 2005, and in 2006, the award for "Best New Artist Debut" at the Blues Music award.
Blues Revue magazine defines it as one of 10 artists that "... represent the future of the blues". His guitar style (reminiscent of the typical sounds of Albert King) and the powerful and warm voice and the ability to create the show on stage, make the truly unique and engaging concerts.

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Saturday 24 june
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The last night of the 2017 edition opens the evening with the usual concert / drink on the park theater. The Washboard CHAZ with Paul Venturi & The Junkers will open the dances. Chaz is an icon of the country blues of New Orleans. Born in 1949 is a very popular artist in New Orleans and across the southern United States, which allowed him to open for the likes of Muddy Waters, Robert Cray, Doc Watson and others. In his long career he has had the opportunity to record songs together with important members of the Blues, as John Hammond, with whom he recorded "Long as I have you", which has been able to play at the Grammy Nomination in 1998.
With its various projects, he has trodden prestigious stages in all the States, Europe and Asia.
It is also one of the musicians in the project "Play For Change", in the last decade has gained fame worldwide and that he committed, in two official videos, alongside artists such as Keith Richards, Keb 'Mo' and some members of the Grateful Dead.
Chaz is undoubtedly one of the most significant musicians of the US Washboard Blues landscape, as stated by John Hammond in an interview, as well as being a great artistic singer.
Accompanying Paul Venturi & The Junkers, band already in the Bellinzona Blues Session stage in 2015 and in 2016 he represented the Italian to "European Blues Challenge".
This year Venturi distinguished himself overseas performing at "Jerry Lee Lewis Festival" and the International Blues Challenge in Memphis.
The Junkers are complemented by Roberto Villa on bass and Alberto Bazzoli to the piano.


The great finale will start with two concerts scheduled on the main stage. The first group to perform will be a super blues band soul with a powerful horn section: RAWLS JOHNNY & THE ÖZDEMIRS feat. THE LONDON HORNS. A native of Mississippi, where his grandfather taught him the rudiments of the guitar, Johnny Rawls owes part of its success to the great O.V. Wright, with which he played until his death. He later went on to careers with training Ace of Spades with whom he has toured with big names of the international blues scene as BB King, Little Milton, Bobby Blue Bland, Tyrone Davis, Otis Clay, .etc ... Mel 2006 2012 and in 2014 he was appointed to the Blues Music Awards for "Best Soul Blues Album of the year" and "Best Soul Artist" and always in those years the West Coast Blues Hall of Fame has included in the list of "Best Vocalist". Johnny performs on stages around the world The contemporary soul Rawls is considered unique in the black music scene. It will be accompanied by well-oiled backing band led by Özdemirs acrobatic Erkan (blues musician and promoter). The Özdemirs are a family (father and sons) formed by Erkan, Kenan and Levent, devoted to blues and black music in general. Accompany routinely in European tour and American artists like Sugaray Rayford, Kirk Fletcher, Mike Morgan, Hollan K Smith and many others. A strong band influenced by the styles of Freddy King, Albert Collins, BB King to the soulful funk of James Brown, AL Green and Bootsy Collins. Rounding out the lineup a powerful horn section from London formed by trombonist Barnaby Dickinson, trumpeter Tom Rees Roberts and saxophonist James Knight. The London Horns are considered one of the best wind sections in Europe as part of the funk, Jazz and Soul. A superband of 8 world-class musicians that will warm the Piazza with funk, soul and blues. A perfect combination to introduce the last concert of the evening with the Blues legend Bobby Rush ....

The last concert in 2017 will be together the recent winner of the Grammy Award BOBBY RUSH on an European exclusive (see description above). An evening of hot Soul Blues rhythms with funk and jazz influences.

BELLINZONA BLUES SESSIONS IS SUPPORTED BY THE FOLLOWING SPONSORS / PARTNERS:

• BANCA STATO,
• CITTÀ DI BELLINZONA
• DECS-SWISSLOS
• AMB-WAMBO
• OTR BELLINZONESE E ALTO TICINO
• CAVIEZEL SA
• HEINEKEN
• LA MOBILIARE
• APPENZELLER AG
• SPUMANTI GEMIN
• GIN 27
• MS CATERING
• METANORD
• AMAG- SKODA
• EMME
• ER-NOLEGGIO

INFO ON: WWW:BELLINZONABLUES:CH