Sunday night saw the start of the Jazz Festival's newest series, Viva Italia!, which focuses on Italian jazz and Italian musicians at new venue Rochester Club Ballroom. I think the genre-specific stages are a great idea for the festival, enabling it to diversify its line-up even more. That's best exemplified by this year's addition of the roots/Americana stage at Abilene, but this is a cool addition to the UK stage at Christ Church and the Nordic stage over at the Lutheran Church.

The Rochester Club is an interesting new venue, although its pre-show line did get confused by many festivalgoers as the line for the Viktoria Tolstoy show at Kilbourn Hall. So that's going to need some working out, I think. To access the Rochester Club, concertgoers have to climb several flights of stairs to get to the ballroom itself, in which roughly a couple dozen banquet tables have been set up, the chairs around them providing seating for probably 150 or so people. So it's a fairly intimate room, decked out in fairly standard ballroom details - faux columns on the walls, chandeliers on the ceiling, etc. The set up encourages use of the full food and bar service, and a platoon of waiters buzzed constantly about the room, brining everything from drinks to plates of calamari, hot spinach and feta wraps, and even alligator sausages (seriously) throughout the show.

As for the performance by the Antonio Ciacca Trio, it was...pleasant. I feel the need here to reiterate that I am still something of a jazz neophyte, and part of the fun of this Jazz Fest for me has been discovering the kinds of jazz I respond to, and the kinds that I do not. This was not the kind of jazz I respond to. The music was too laid back and laconic for my liking. I would best describe it as "music to eat dinner to," which of course was perfect for the setting, but not entirely fulfilling as a listening experience.

The combo of course features Ciacca (pronounced "Chaka," as in Khan), who did most of the heavy lifting on piano, plowing through several originals and a slew of standards from the likes of Duke Ellington and Thelonious Monk. He was backed by a drummer and bassist. I thought the group started off very, very loose. They didn't seem together for a good chunk of the first song; the drummer in particular seemed to be playing the rhythm for another number altogether. But he got steadily better as the set went on, culminating in two fairly lengthy solos toward the end of the show. The bass was largely unnoticeable for a majority of the set, stepping into the spotlight only for two well-placed solos.

Ciacca is a strong, lyrical pianist, but I was surprised by how little he interacted with the audience. For most of the set he hovered over the keys, playing studiously (I kept thinking of Schroeder from "Peanuts"), clearly interacting with the music in his head, but not really putting much out to the audience watching him. He took the mic two or three times for some limited descriptions, but for the most part he just focused on the music.

Again, I think this may have been a case where I was the wrong audience for this particular show - it was a lot smoother than I was anticipating, and I apparently like my jazz with a little bit of spice to it. This to me never really took off; the set just cruised along at a steady pace, even when Ciacca and his crew kicked up the time signatures or the volume.

Looking around the room it seemed many people were enjoying themselves, bobbing their heads amiably in time to the music. And when the set wrapped Ciacca got a standing ovation and several loud whistles. So maybe I was just totally out of my element. Maybe I needed an extra cup of coffee before the show. Maybe I should have ordered one of those alligator sausages.

Monday night I'll be hitting the XRIJF-ESM Scholarship Show at the Kodak Hall. It's free and should feature a lot of young jazz talent, so I'm pretty excited to check it out.