Porretta Soul was a success. The festival is increasingly international.

Four record-breaking nights. This confirms the success of the Porretta Soul Festival, which has arrived right on time for its 37th edition. Eight thousand tickets were sold for the concerts, adding to the thousands more who attended the free live performances. Nineteen bands animated the streets of the city center last weekend.

A special year, 2025, which celebrated the soulful sisterhood of the two cities dedicated to the genre, Memphis and Porretta. After the festival's special preview, in the charming greenery of Rufus Thomas Park in Porretta Terme, with the 66-member Uniting Voices Chicago directed by Josephine Lee, the festival got into full swing with the Memphis Music Hall of Fame Band, Jerome Chism, who celebrated Wilson Pickett, and Vincent Carr, who paid tribute to his father, the legendary James. Also featured were Texan showman Captain Jack Watson, sporting a pirate-esque eye patch, and hip hopper Al Kapeezy, aka Al Kapone.

Memphis was also well represented by John Nemeth and his Blue Dreamers, Irish soul rocker Andrew Strong with Dublin Soul, and the debut of explosive soul sister Crystal Thomas and the Canadian Blackburn Brothers. Not to mention the entertaining invention of CERN engineer Erwin Siesling, who arrived in Porretta with the original 'bluesmobile' used in the film Blues Brothers by John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd.