Jazz /
Parole e Musica
*2022 stock* Helen Merrill has done something very few others have done in the world of jazz for, just with one record, she has come to be considered one of jazz’s greats. Usually a budding new star has to do quite a bit of waiting before he or she can be acclaimed. It all depends on the public’s opinion of the musician’s merits. Sarah Vaughan—amongst the singers —and Julian “Cannonball” Adderley—among the instrumentalists—have had to take their place in the queue awaiting the people’s favourabl…
Quartetto Di Lucca
*2022 stock* It is quite rare to discover on the Italian Jazz scene a successful ensemble, which passed unscathed through years. Bands are usually weakened or put in crisis, most of the times caused by sudden changes in line-ups.
The “Quartetto di Lucca” is a band of young players which formerly were part of the amateurial “Hot Clubs” and some years ago debuted among the pros.
The quartet of Lucca, however, has a peculiarity of its own, the ability to defend the results and the continuity of a f…
Jacques Pelzer Quartet
*2022 stock* In every artistic field it is hard to understand how critically important first impressions are. I am talking about those quick and uncontrollable connections, like an electric shock, that originate from the direct proportion between the work of art standing before us (a picture, a poem, a piece of music) and our feelings. The critical judgement as such requires a deep meditation and the artistic work in question should be examined probably in the microscopic detail of the cultural …
Swing im Bahnhof
*2022 stock* The Kenny Clarke-Fancy Boland Ensemble has its headquarter and management in Cologne. Many international recordings and releases presents the lineup of the Clarke-Boland in trio, quartet, sextet and in bands with 13 and 21 musicians from all over Europe. This time, they were a sextet that traveled to Rolandseck, a German ensemble with no Germans.Kenny “Klook” Clarke is one of the heads of the bebop movement. He was also one of the founders of the Modern Jazz Quartet and he is consid…
Metamorphosis
I think that the title of this album is perfectly congenial – ”Metamorphosis” as for “profound transformation in form and structure”. I have known and listened to Guido, born in 1935, for more than 40 years and consider myself as an expert of his impressive musical production since his debut in 1966. Guido is a full-blooded swinger and his playing is firmly rooted in the tradition. Surprisingly, after listening to this record I hear and find a pianist astonishingly original and dynamic playing w…
The Golden Eight - Encore!
*2022 stock* This reissue is great news for the jazz-loving community. The multi-national Golden Eight ensemble assembled by Gigi Campi featured Kenny Clarke and Jimmy Woode (USA), Francy Boland and Chris Kellens (Belgium), Dusko Gojkovic (Yugoslavia), Raymond Droz (Switzerland), Derek Humble (UK) and Karl Drevo (Austria). And it was the forerunner of the legendary Clarke-Boland Big Band. Seven of the eleven pieces in the album are distinctive originals by Boland, the remaining four tracks being…
Playing With The Trio
*2022 stock* “There is a two-fold pleasure in listening to the leader of a big band play in a trio setting. First, there is the satisfaction of hearing a voice that is normally in the background being brought to centre stage. As a composer and arranger, Francy Boland typically spoke with many tongues. Like Ellington, he wrote with specific players in mind and so, as with a playwright, we usually hear his thoughts interpreted and given utterance by others. The big band format allows the band-lead…
Blue Train
*2022 stock* It all started with a scratchy, somewhat surfacenoisy tape early in 1966.There were a few Italian words scribbled on a piece of paper – and someone called Guido Manusardi playing a whole lot of piano. Well, Sweden is fairly used to Italian musicians traveling the hotel and restaurant circuit. But Italian jazz musicians in the business – that was a novelty. Even more so since signor Manusardi appeard to be ready for a wide audience.In fact, not even that first and badly balanced do-i…
Quartetto Gianni Basso
*2022 stock* Gianni Basso represents one of the most solid institutions of the Italian jazz. He has been like this since the beginning, when he appeared in Milan after some years abroad. At that time he already had a long story behind him as an activist jazz musician: he started playing during his childhood in his hometown of Asti (where he was born in 1931) and then in Belgium, where his father emigrated with his family to work in the mines. It was there that he discovered the jazz music at its…
Mirrors
*2022 stock* There is a school of thought which maintains that it is something of a tragedy that Benny has had to earn his living and play his trade as an American emigre in Europe, far from the centre of major jazz activities in his native United States. His contribution, they argue, would have been so much larger and much more widely appreciated. He may have won more polls, true. But the personal contentment which life in the more relaxed atmosphere of Western Europe has supplied probably more…
Reincarnation of a Lovebird
*2022 stock* The opinion of jazz musicians concerning Charles Mingus’ compositions and his protean musical world is that for a long time they represented an area that should be avoided or, at most, dealt with care. Just a few years after his death, of which his thirtieth anniversary occurs this year, they started to look deeper into his repertory, except for a part of which had been proposed in the past (Goodbye Pork Pie Hat was the most largely used).
Just like Duke Ellington various projects w…
Jazz In Studio
*2022 stock* 2008 Release. This record is the fruit of five months of hard work in the recording studio, rehearsals and even sacrifices as told by Enrico Intra and I am obviously satisfied with it. But I sure don't want to consider it a goal. I feel like I'm going toward the right direction and I hope my next work is further confirmation of the effort, seriousness and true passion I've put into my music. Those who know Enrico Intra remember his face like a baby always living in cloud-cuckoo-land…
Swing, Waltz, Swing
*2022 stock* Three – instead of – four this figure can mean a whole different world, when it comes to beats. Whereas the even number lets you march straight, turns right-angled, divides itself symmetrically, the odd rhythm goes around in circles and whirls. One heavy step, followed by two light ones, that can not go straight, that has to turn and turn and turn. The old Vienna and its young people was once ruled by “Waltz speeding” as today the beat shakes up even country dancefloors. Yet, that c…
Lady Heavy Bottom's Waltz
*2022 stock* They called him the “Little Giant” long ago in Chicago – they still call him so. In order to understand why “Little” you have to see him – it’s enough to hear him to understand why “Giant”. But just to listen to him means missing out on so much. “I just look at Johnny and feel the power of positive swinging”, the “producer” says.
Like most small people (let’s not exaggerate the “small” – he’s not exactly a dwarf) Johnny appears to have been blessed with an extra portion of energy. H…
Music For Small Hours
*2022 stock* Had it not been for the post-war migration of many top American jazz musicians to Europe, it is quite likely that the legendary Clarke-Boland Big Band might never have come into existence. As it happened, when Gigi Campi set up the first big band record date in Cologne on December 13, 1961, (Jazz Is Universal for the Atlantic label), he was able to call upon such distinguished self-exiled jazz stars as Benny Bailey (originally from Cleveland, Ohio), Sahib Shihab (Savannah, Georgia),…
Off Limits
*2022 stock* Myths take a long time dying, especially in jazz where the ability to confuse fact and fantasy has marked several generations of both critics and listeners. Perhaps the great Buddy Bolden could be heard for 14 miles on a clear night, but those who still believe that old one deserves to be interned in the same kind of institutions that housed Buddy in his latter days.
The European jazz musicians, despite years of recorded evidence stretching right back to the wonderful Django Reinhar…
November Girl
*2022 stock* One of consolations of the electronic age is that those great moments in music which once were ephemeral and irretrievable can be faithfully captured, preserved for all time and savoured over and over again. Thus, some of the great musical peaks in the ten-year lifespan of the great Kenny Clarke-Francy Boland Big Band are stored for posterity on more than a score of albums. Despite writer Bob Houston’s urgent appeal for a conservation order to be put on this improbable aggregation o…
Zamboni 22
*2022 stock* Climate- atmosphere is what we say. Soul with beautiful expression, is what they say in the modern jazz scene in the US. It’s a necessary component for good jazz, as well as for swing. But to achieve an organic atmosphere which is therefore vital and alive, a relationship of intentions and views, and a congeniality of thoughts are needed. When Tommasi was in Rome for a few days and had Santucci and Scoppa listen to the latest pieces he had composed, the three musicians ideas, …
Rearward in Italy
*2022 stock* It was a really great idea to search for pieces, with the taste of a collector, and to produce this compilation, with jazz pieces and pieces extracted from refined sound tracks which have a subtle and intelligent taste, among the production of some of the biggest Italian composers in this sector. It is a piece that has never been reedited and it is of great taste, and consequent will to give works to an audience that otherwise are difficult to discover. And therefore has taste for …
Abstraction
*2022 stock* Gianni Cazzola confesses that he would have never expected that an one of his albums from the late sixties would be re-discovered and re-issued. Thirty years after its release people are again talking about “Abstraction”. Recorded in November of 1969 in Milan, “Abstraction” is Gianni Cazzola’s first record as a leader, with Oscar Rocchi on the piano and composing and Cornelio Dattoli on the electric bass. The album was born from an idea developed in a jazz club in Milan.
For those t…