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Simone Guiducci
Born in Turin, Italy, Simone Guiducci, guitarist and composer, has been hailed as one of the most talented musicians on the Italian jazz scene since the early 90′s going on to make several internationally acclaimed recordings as leader. With his project GRAMELOT, a creative dialogue between italian folklore themes and jazz improvisation, Simone Guiducci has forged strong ties with the recording and concert worlds, working with Ralph Alessi, Erik Friedlander, Enrico Rava, Paolo Fresu, Chris Speed, Don Byron, Gianluigi Trovesi, Kenny Wheeler, Maria Pia de Vito, Nicolas Simion and Eberhard Weber. He has 4 cds produced by italian label Felmay : the debut album, CANTADOR (2000); CHORALE (2002) with Erik Friedlander on cello and Ralph Alessi on trumpet as guests ; DANCIN’ ROOTS (2004, featuring clarinetist Don Byron as guest), STORIE DI FIUME (2006) and the last release THAT’S ALL FOLKS, (december 2011), again with Ralph Alessi as special guest.
As one well known critic puts it, GRAMELOT’s folk-jazz is “fluid and free, rippling between jazz, classical and popular music, between regional and global, between the ancient and modern world. It is a language of jazz improvisation interwoven with popular melodies, spoken with an ease and grace. It is many ‘languages’, spoken as musical expressions or idioms, which come together in a world where the imagination shapes them into new and old forms that are always intriguing”.
Guiducci has received acclaim both from Italian critics, who voted him second in Top Jazz’s classification of emerging talents in Italy, and from abroad, with reviews in leading specialist magazines including JAZZMAN (France), ALL ABOUT JAZZ (USA), CADENCE (USA), JAZZMAGAZINE (France) and relevant interview on top magazine JAZZPODIUM (Germany) .
CHORALE came in at number six in the 2002 best jazz record top ten, voted by the panel of critics judging in the TOPJAZZ classification of the specialist monthly italian magazine Musica Jazz. This recording was also in the TOPTEN of the year 2003 by ALL ABOUT JAZZ Editor Michael Ricci.
In the past few years, Simone Guiducci has performed in Italy & all around the world : Tokyo, Rio de Janeiro, Montreal, Moscow, Berlin, Sao Paulo, Stockholm, Buenos Aires, Caracas, Amsterdam, Istanbul, Quito, Lima, Mexico City, Vancouver, Helsinki, Vilnius, Tallin, Liège, Charleroi, Lyon, Ankara, Frankfurt, Guatemala City, Dusseldorf, Bremen, Dublin, Nantes, Zagreb, Beograd, Tirana, Haifa, Nazareth and more.
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Simone Guiducci Gramelot Ensemble: Storie di Fiume
by Ian Patterson
On first listening to Storie di fiume(River Tales), Simone Guiducci's Gramelot Ensemble's fourth recording, one wonders whether this is folk music colored by jazz, or jazz music influenced by folk. But like the confluence of two rivers there comes a point where it is impossible to distinguish the two separate entities--the absorption is complete and mutual.
On the opening track, “Uomini di fiume," the accordion of Fausto Beccalossi and the clarinet of Achille Succi blend as one, carrying ...
read moreSimone Guiducci Gramelot Ensemble: Storie di Fiume
by Glenn Astarita
Italian acoustic guitarist and composer Simone Guiducci has performed with German bass legend Eberhard Weber and American multi-reedist Chris Speed, among other notables. On Storie di Fiume, the artist's alterable Gramelot Ensemble fuses the sounds of Mediterranean folk music with spiraling improvisational forays.
Guiducci's signature invocation of jazz and Italian melodies is something of a trademark sound. At times peaceable and slightly raucous, the leader commandeers linear progressions with veteran woodwind player Achille Succi, solely performing on clarinets for this ...
read moreSimone Guiducci Gramelot Ensemble: Dancin' Roots
by Glenn Astarita
Italian acoustic guitarist Simone Guiducci often employs well-known American jazz musicians for his conspicuously ambitious projects. With this effort, he benefits from clarinetist Don Byron's expertise, along with rising star trumpeter Ralph Alessi and other top-notch instrumentalists. Guiducci's trademark fusion of Mediterranean themes with complex harmonic sojourns once again offers more than just a few rewarding attributes. His muse features a classy brew consisting of complex unison lines, off-meter Latin grooves, and lyrically rich melodies.
Accordionist Fausto Beccalossi's ...
read moreSimone Guiducci: Dancin' Roots
by AAJ Staff
By Angelo Leonardi
Born in 1962 in Turin, Italy, guitarist and composer Simone Guiducci has been hailed as a creative voice on the contemporary Italian jazz scene. He's made several internationally acclaimed recordings as a leader including his two latest, Dancin' Roots (Felmay, 2005) and Chorale (Felmay, 2003). With his ongoing project “Gramelot", Guiducci explores the creative dialogue between Italian folklore themes and jazz improvisation.
His “Gramelot Ensemble" has been comprised of distinguished Italian musicians over the years including Enrico ...
read moreSimone Guiducci Gramelot Ensemble: Dancin' Roots
by John Kelman
With consistently compelling releases from labels like EGEA and CAM Jazz, the vibrancy of the Italian jazz scene is becoming more and more recognized by a larger international audience. Increasingly self-evident is that the Italian jazz community encompasses both the broader improvising tradition of American jazz and the intrinsic ethnicity of its own rich musical history. But while much of EGEA's music has a distinctive coastal Mediterranean flavour, and CAM Jazz, by focusing to some extent on the vivid legacy ...
read moreSimone Guiducci Gramelot Ensemble: Dancin' Roots
by Paul Olson
Musicians have been combining various musical genres with jazz for decades and the results are often pretty messy. Jazz doesn't mix as well with its musical brethren as one might hope: often its improvisational side is diluted and all that survives the graft is an empty virtuosity. That's why the achievement of Italian acoustic guitarist Simone Guiducci and his Gramelot Ensemble is so stunning; as evidenced by Dancin' Roots , their fusion of jazz with various European and Middle-Eastern folk ...
read moreSimone Guidicci: Chorale
by Elliott Simon
Acoustic guitarist Simone Guiducci and his Gramelot Ensemble have defined a new musical language that combines indigenous Northern Italian folk music with modern jazz. Inspired by the invented “gramelot" language of 15th century troubadours, 16th century Monteverdian fundamental discords and the modern gramelot of playwright Dario Fo, the Ensemble's latest release, Chorale, exposes a quintet that is in search of a broader musical patois but at the same time is comfortable with its roots. Like the previous ...
read moreFelmay Records Releases Simone Guiducci Gramelot Ensemble's "Chorale"
Source:
All About Jazz
Acoustic guitarist SIMONE GUIDUCCI is back with a new record, Chorale, again accompanied by the brilliant and inseparable Gramelot Ensemble along with a clutch of guest musicians familiar from the international jazz scene. Chorale marks a significant step on in Guiducci's pursuit of folk/jazz hybrid forms, a quest he has been on for several years now and which his previous album, the delightful Cantador showed to be rich in potential. The dialogue gets sharper and tighter on Chorale, opening out ...
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…Overall, this is enlightening stuff! Unassumingly charismatic, Guiducci continues to flaunt his personalized approach to modern jazz in a conclusively prolific way ! …Feverishly recommended…
…Guiducci’s signature invocation of jazz and italian melodies is something of a trademark sound…
********************************************************** Bill Shoemaker on JAZZREVIEW (UK) - CHORALE
…the limpid “Last Chorale & Dance” and the children’s song-based “Filastrocca per Martina” provide a strong finish to the album reasserting the glow of Northern Italian folk music as the project’s main inspiration and the Gramelot Ensemble’s abilities in collectively improvised passages. It is a fullfilling end to a very satisfying album…
Primary Instrument
Guitar, acoustic
Credentials/Background
Teacher at Jazz Conservatory in Mantova, Italy
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Simone Guiducci
Instrument: Guitar, acoustic
Born: May 24, 1962
