Thursday, December 20, 2012
N.B. Information for readers.
The pianist mentioned in this article by the name Giuseppe Perna is the undersigned, known in "Piano Concerto" by the name "modale"
A few notes on Italian jazz (2nd part): piano
To tell the truth, there has been much debate regarding the approach to this article; I was torn between doing something very synthetic on one hand (which, however, would not allow me to express concepts) and something too analytical on the other, which would not have sufficed in a single article. I therefore decided on a sort of serialized history, dedicating a monthly post to each instrument, starting with the piano. I still wanted to make some clarifications: these lists of names and/or discographic reports must be taken with a certain flexibility, keeping in mind that they are based exclusively on my knowledge (which I hope you understood in the general part), prioritizing the idea of developing as simple and clear a snapshot as possible of what I believe is important in Italian jazz today. The same has no claim to being exhaustive and must not prejudice judgments on further listening to which I have not been able to dedicate time (on the contrary, I renew the invitation to supplement it via the comments). Furthermore, I have tried to organize everything into a pleonastic subdivision of today's jazz into three main groupings: the traditionalists (boppers and proponents of mainstream), the post-moderns (free improvisers and free polystylists), and the "ethnic" ones (jazz musicians with references to traditional culture).
Pianists
Italy has always had a great tradition of pianists who, starting from Gaslini, have expressed many illustrious names in jazz. Some of them come from a non-strictly jazz tradition (think of D'Andrea or Salis), but then embraced it completely and exhaustively. Franco D'Andrea has just published a very significant CD for El Gallo Rojo, "Traditions and clusters", one of the best of his career, which, capitalizing on the type of experiences being made at that label, perhaps represents the sum of that idea of composing through a puzzle of heterogeneous sounds and styles in which both the leader and the group are highlighted. Antonello Salis, moreover, does not seem to stop his creativity and desire to embrace new projects: his second "Pianosolo" for Cam Jazz is the best testimony of his art, now fully framed in the Olympus of the best European pianists ever. Today, however, at a pianistic level, the helm of promotion seems to be in the hands of the young Stefano Bollani, who can be considered a precocity of our jazz in light of the results achieved: before joining the ECM stable, Bollani published several CDs in which an open-minded pianist emerged, drawing not only from the jazz tradition but ranging from twentieth-century classical to rock formality, with a sure and decisive touch in which originality stemmed from a certain degree of instrumental quirkiness that seems to have gradually receded in recent discographic efforts dedicated to equally valid but more internationalized sounds/compositions (think of the difference between works like "Les fleurs bleues" or "Smat smat" and "Piano solo" or "The third man"). The other pianist from ECM Records is the very peculiar Stefano Battaglia, to whom I have already had the opportunity to dedicate a short review/monograph and to which I refer you (1).
Staying on the more free-style post-moderns, the work of pianists such as Umberto Petrin seems still very valid to me (although quite delayed in recording times) (the collaboration with trumpeter Jean-Luc Cappozzo in "Law Years" is highly valid) and undoubtedly continues the precious work of Gianni Lenoci who, jumping gracefully and intelligently through his collaborations for the main Italian and foreign labels in the sector, represents a fixed point for certain jazz experiences that feed on apparent dissonances and the openness towards the "extended" use of the piano (2). Also in this field, an excellent pianist is the Sardinian Sebastiano Meloni, an original re-extender of sounds who can be appreciated in a trio with OrrĂą and Tony Oxley in "Improvised music for trio", just as serious and far from compromise is the work of pianist Alberto Braida, whose characteristics can be appreciated in "Talus", as well as in various recordings in formats most suitable to chamber jazz with double bassists such as De Joode, Hughes and Lisle Hellis and in duets with clarinetist G. Locatelli; interesting is also the work on prepared piano by Fabrizio Puglisi, currently in the orbit of Dutch creative improvisers (note "Duets for Prepared unprepared and toy pianos" with Albert Van Veenendaal). Remaining within the scope of young pianists belonging to the El...
The most interesting Red Roosters are Giorgio Pacorig, fixed in the formations of Danilo Gallo, Zwei Mal Drei—“We hope we understand”—and The Roosters—“Everything crooked”, with a perfect and dynamic free Taylorian style and Alfonso Santimone with the Laser Pigs of “Ecce combo” who sets his free pianism improvising on themes from the opera 19, Sechs Kleine Klavierstücke by Schoenberg.
In the wide area of the piano tradition that includes those who play bop (even in its advanced forms) or who approach the immortal style of Bill Evans (a style that was later married by Enrico Pieranunzi a few years later(3)), lies the largest quantity of our pianists; if among the most illustrious names of the recent past one can count pianists who, without changing their proposal by a single comma, have reached wide levels of notoriety (think in this sense of Antonio Faraò, of whom I hold a beautiful memory of his recording debut “Black Inside”), there are others who have not yet fully found it, as in the case of the excellent impressions coming from Sicilian pianists Salvatore Bonafede (“Dream and dreams”) and Giuseppe Finocchiaro (“Incipit”); meanwhile, the section of very young emerging talents is strengthening: among these, the most prepared and ready for a more demanding path seem to me to be Roberto Tarenzi (active in Di Battista's entourage, who can be well heard in “13 Floors”) and Claudio Filippini, a brilliant pianist who reached his first peak in “The Enchanted garden”, while Francesco Nastro, in an excellent collaboration with Gary Peacock and Peter Erskine in “Trio dialogues” and Stefania Tallini in “The Illusionist”, demonstrate that they are very good pianists within the boundaries outlined by Jarrett's bluesy style of the early seventies and Lyle Mays' morbidly new-age style. Particularly intense is the “classical” heritage that influences the proposals of pianist Giovanni Guidi, who has already become a national reality and can be appreciated in the trio of “Tomorrow never knows”, and those of the precocious twenty-two-year-old Enrico Zanisi in “Life Variations”.
The “ethnic” contamination mentioned before has been a constant that has infiltrated the ideas of many jazz musicians: they have inserted into their compositions elements belonging to various origins from central-southern Italy and the islands; if the north has clearly insisted on a jazz that consolidated European-based trends (in addition to the American base, naturally), in other regions there has often been a desire to insert elements of one's own territory, exclusive to that territory, that could renew the composition. Following this consideration, there have been striking results in the Roman area extending to Umbria and Tuscany, where thanks to pianists like Pieranunzi or composers like Nicola Piovani, contact was made with a culture taken as a whole, which was the product of a set of multiple references (the musical part seen also in its historicity, the literary part, the cinematographic part, etc.): in this sense, it seems to me that the musical connotations made to Fellini, to the vitality of the capital of those days and to the value of so much local literature are perfect. As for the Naples area, the oblique work of inserting “traditional” elements into the composition of jazz musicians, which had already incidentally interested pianists like Gaslini or D'Andrea, is carried out (also here in a non-constant manner throughout their careers) by pianist Rita Marcotulli, who explicates the Neapolitan source in jazz with an elegant and refined model, far from the looting carried out by many musicians in the past (in “Nauplia” with singer Maria Pia De Vito or with courage expanding horizons to the entire Mediterranean area in “Triboh” together with the Turkish-Armenian percussionist Arto Tunçboyacıyan); in the Sardinian area, some attempts at cultural interposition will come from Salis in the project “Il viandante immaginario”, just as in Puglia the presence of elements dating back to Balkan culture or indirectly Arabized has been strong: one of the best examples of these trends, very integrated with classical music, is that of the excellent Bari pianist Livio Minafra, a son of art (who can be heard in “La dolcezza del grido” or “La fiamma e il cristallo”). In truth, the melodic or Mediterranean breath has often been amplified in the reference geographical areas by jazz musicians and brought into a more generic labyrinth of Latinity that is however evidently harmful; the only case of pure modality in today's Italian jazz is the transversal proposal of the Foggia pianist and my dear collaborator of this blog, Giuseppe Perna (who can be heard in a significant record in the sense of this discussion, in “Taormina”).(4) A particular pianist
Sicilian Giorgio Occhipinti with the Hereo Nonetto of "The Kaos Legend" and in "Histoire" asserts himself in the project of almost total artistic integration between pure contemporary-style improvisation and distilled Mediterranean instances.
http://ettoregarzia.blogspot.it/
Notes:
(1) http://ettoregarzia....-e-michele.html
(2) I had also already dedicated a review with a short monograph to Gianni http://ettoregarzia....-gianni_29.html
(3) for Pieranunzi see http://ettoregarzia....ermutation.html