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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…
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…
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…
Seeds
*2022 stock* Some friends think that Shihab the man owes the balance of his soul to his beautiful Danish wife. They may be right; for Eros is the very essence of what Shihab plays. Yet Eros is a god with many a face. A tale of tender mournings Shihab’s flute is telling in Mauve – a piece that translates its title into delicately changing colors of sound. In Uma Fita De Tres Cores he has his instrument wooing with the proud self-reliance of Latin grandezza. Calmly, softly, almost blandishly Shiha…
Afrodite
**2022 stock** Originally released by Armando Sciascia on his Vedette label, it also features Sante Palumbo, Oscar Rocchi, Giorgio Azzolini and Tullio De Piscopo. Telling Oscar Valdambrini and Dino Piana's story could be pointless for those who have been dealing with Jazz for years here in Italy. They are two of the most esteemed senators in our Jazz scene; two musicians who could cut a fine figure anywhere. The older is Valdambrini (turinese, born 1924), who was first noticed as a valued trumpe…
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),…
Companionship
*2022 stock* Jazz music has more than its fair share of overshadowed figures that whilst contributing much to the music have little presence in its collective conscious. One such musician is the talented multi-reedist, Sahib Shihab.
Born Edmond Gregory, as he was known before he adopted the Muslim faith in 1946, Sahib Shihab’s music background shows a deep and significant evolution, influenced by Thelonious Monk, Dizzie Gillespie (his experience in Dizzie’s band marked Sahib’s switch to Baritone…
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, …
Free and Loose
*2022 stock* A rare bit of 'early' free jazz from Italy – featuring a group led by soprano/tenor sax player Eraldo Volontè, and featuring trumpet, trombone, drums, and a piano-less double-bass rhythm team that gives the record a really unique sound! At some level, the feeling of the material is like ESP avant jamming – except for the fact that the freedom of the players is also firmly tethered to an ability to swing, as one of the bassists always seems to be working the rhythm, even when the oth…
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 …
Crucial Moment
*2022 stock* «Crucial moment» the title assigned by Giorgio Azzolini. And as a fact, jazz in the past years has been going through a crucial, decisive period. On one side the conservation of traditional values of the language and its well-known inspiring of the cause; on the other side the intentions, sometimes only foolish aspirations, of subversion and reorganization, on quite different bases, of jazz expression. The transformed historical – environmental conditions in which the American jazzm…
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…
What's happening?
*2022 stock* Giorgio Azzolini was never a front man bt played with the best Italian musicians of the day, as well as American Expats going through like Chet Baker or Bobby Jaspar. Here he has a trio which is amazing for 1966 in that it combines fuild renditions of standards like "When I Fall In Love" or Bill Evan's "Interplay" or Bird's "Moose The Mooche" but here with the along with Franco D'Andrea (who was pianist in the famous Basso Valdambrini Quintet and along with Renato Sellani the godfat…
Night In Fonorama
*2022 stock* Night in Fonorama. And it was a night in the real meaning of the word, that the five jazzmen spent at the Fonorama, one of the most important studios in Milano. It was the night of May the 31st 1964. They met at nine o’ clock in the evening, and they saw the day-break on a working Milano while they still were trying to perfectionate the last tune.
We said they «met»: and no word is more significative to indicate the meeting of the five musicians at the studio. There was nothing deci…
Tribute To Someone
*2022 stock* 1999 Release. A lost Italian gem from the 60s! Bassist Giorgio Azzolini was one of Italy's best players during the postwar years, and this handsome reissue brings to light one of his rarer sessions from the 60s. The record's a lyrical septet session, with Azzolini's warm round basslines right up front, and beautiful solo work by a young Gato Barbieri on tenor, Franco Ambrosetti on trumpet, and Renato Sellani on piano. The session has the warmth and sensitivity of some of Horace Silv…