Nona edizione per Venezia Suona (Venezia Suona 2007)
On July 5, 2007, eJazzNews published an Italian-language news item headlined “Nona edizione per Venezia Suona” (Ninth edition for Venezia Suona), about the one-day festival that filled Venice’s squares and the Grand Canal with live music. The original eJazzNews text has not been preserved. This page describes the 2007 festival from the organizers’ own announcement, which other Italian sites published under the same headline, and follows the festival to its current form, still directed in 2026 by its founder, the Venetian jazz saxophonist Giannantonio De Vincenzo.
What the 2007 announcement said
The ninth Venezia Suona was set for Sunday, July 8, 2007, from 5 pm to 12:30 am. According to the press release, more than a hundred Italian and foreign musicians would play on music barges, along the banks of the Grand Canal and in the city’s calli, campi and campielli, in styles from jazz, swing manouche and gypsy jazz to baroque and contemporary music, funk, rock, ska and Brazilian rhythms, with string orchestras, big bands and dancers. The announcement presented Venice as the only city in the world without noise from car traffic; an Italian site on noise pollution, inquinamentoacustico.it, listed the eJazzNews item in its 2007 news index, and that link is still live.
Two features were new that year. “Suoni fluidi” (Fluid sounds) put six traveling barges on the Grand Canal from 5 to 10:30 pm with beat, funk and ethnic groups, choirs and experimental percussion. “Venezia Tuona,” in Campo San Luca from 6:30 to 10:30 pm, was given over to electronic music with four DJ sets. The French string orchestra Vibrations was to play a program from baroque to contemporary, and the evening was to end at 11:15 pm in Piazza San Marco with the big band Il Suono Improvviso. The release named the culture departments of the City and Province of Venice, the Casinò di Venezia and Venezia Si hotel as partners. For the range of styles involved, see our overview of types of jazz.
The festival and its founder
Venezia Suona was first held on June 20, 1999, on an idea of De Vincenzo, and was built on turning the whole city into an open-air stage for a single day. De Vincenzo, born in Venice in July 1954, is a jazz saxophonist who studied at the Verona conservatory, worked in France and Sweden in the early 1980s and from 1984 played in Keptorchestra, whose guests over the years included Steve Lacy and Enrico Rava. He also founded Il Suono Improvviso, a music production center with its own orchestra, the band that closed the 2007 edition. According to Italian Wikipedia, he ran Venezia Suona as a one-day citywide event for more than a decade from 1999.
What happened next
The name lives on in a different format. Il Suono Improvviso now organizes Venezia Suona as a ten-day festival in the Parco ex Umberto I in Venice; the City of Venice listed the 2026 event, from June 12 to 21, as the fifth edition of the new series, again directed by De Vincenzo.
Sources
- Sottocoperta.net, “8 luglio 2007, Nona edizione per Venezia suona,” 2007.
- NonSoloCinema, “Nona edizione per Venezia Suona (Venezia, 8 luglio 2007),” press release, July 8, 2007.
- Inquinamento Acustico, “Notizie 2007,” inquinamentoacustico.it.
- MeetingVenice, “Venezia Suona,” meetingvenice.it.
- Wikipedia (Italian), “Giannantonio De Vincenzo,” accessed October 2026.
- Comune di Venezia, “5^ edizione di Venezia Suona,” June 4, 2026.
This page is based on an article from the original eJazzNews archive (2001 to 2018), with background and sources added in 2026. The original text is not republished here.
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