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Gianluigi Trovesi

Gianluigi Trovesi has accomplished that most difficult of feats, not only for a jazzman, or a musician even, but for any artist. He managed to create a musical world that is instantly recognizable and completely original at the same time. Drawing upon an unlikely and personal combination of sources, and having undergone a growth process in which the usual steps in the development of a musical career were reversed, Trovesi bloomed relatively late as an artist. Yet today his voice as a composer and improviser ranks among those who created the notion of a "European Jazz" inspired by the American tradition, but not an imitation of it. Michel Portal, Misha Mengelberg, Evan Parker and John Surman are others who help define its range. Born in 1944 into a working-class family in Nembro, a small village in an Alpine valley not far from Bergamo in northern Italy, the young Trovesi found music around him. It was played in the common spaces of his neighborhood: the chorus for traditional mountain singing or the church choir, the guitar-accordion-clarinet trio that accompanied dances, and later the rare record and the communal listening to opera and light classical music on the first radio sets. Music was so intertwined with everyday life Trovesi didn't realize it could be a separate profession until a music teacher told him about the Bergamo Conservatory, a time-honored institution situated in the city of Donizetti just a few kilometers away, where people - to his amazement - could go to learn and play music all day. He gained there his diploma in clarinet in 1966, having also studied harmony, counterpoint and fugue with Maestro Vittorio Fellegara, a relevant personality in the history of Italian music of '900. But at the same time his musical curiosity, and the chance to earn some well deserved fees, brought him to play in dance hall, where the American dance tunes were added to the European traditional music for walzer and polka, mixed with the ever-popular tango. Swing of the Glenn Miller and Benny Goodman denomination was then the prevailing element in jazz, even if quickly Charlie Parker's bop, Mulligan's and Konitz's cool and the first recordings by Ornette Coleman were added to the heady mix. The young musician was indeed listening avidly to the "new thing" coming from the USA. Especially relevant was the chance to listen live to Mingus' group with Eric Dolphy at the Milano festival in 1964. Dolphy's alto phrasing was rooted into bebop but his point of arrival was completely different, and the way he used the bass clarinet was another world if compared to what was studied in the Conservatory for classical and contemporary music.

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Liner Notes

Dino Betti van der Noot: Here Comes Springtime

Read "Dino Betti van der Noot: Here Comes Springtime" reviewed by AAJ Staff


There are some musicians whose instrument is the orchestra. They hear multiple voices, textures, harmonic designs. And if they are jazz composers, they hear the sweet and pungent tension between the orchestra and the improvising soloist. If, moreover, they are composers interested in more than self-gratification, they hear, as they write, particular players so that the ultimate scores reflect a range of individual personalities, each of them telling their own stories as well as that of the composer.

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Liner Notes

Dino Betti van der Noot: A Chance For A Dance

Read "Dino Betti van der Noot: A Chance For A Dance" reviewed by Neil Tesser


"I love the rhythm—one of the reasons I love jazz is the rhythm—but I have spent some years to free myself from the rhythm." Dino Betti van der Noot sits over breakfast rolls at the Rosetta Hotel in Perugia, Italy. “I experimented with different time signatures and finally found out that the simplest ones are perfect, as long as you make use of them as, oh, railways, rail tracks." In other words, the time-feel must be a guide, a phisical, ...

Album Review

NRG Bridges: Intertwined Roots

Read "Intertwined Roots" reviewed by Neri Pollastri


I fratelli Adalberto Ferrari e Andrea Ferrari, con il loro duo NovoTono, ci hanno negli ultimi anni mostrato molteplici prove del loro essere tra i più interessanti esploratori dei magnifici suoni che possono scaturire dai legni della famiglia dei clarinetti (clicca qui per leggere la recensione del loro Wood(Winds) At Work). In quest'occasione hanno modo di tornare a illustrarcelo assieme a colui che, in Italia, può esser considerato un autentico maestro di tale ricerca di suoni: Gianluigi Trovesi.Dando ...

Interview

Gianluigi Trovesi: dal solo alle orchestre

Read "Gianluigi Trovesi: dal solo alle orchestre" reviewed by Libero Farnè


Non era più giovanissimo Gianluigi Trovesi quando alla fine degli anni Settanta venne alla ribalta nel sestetto di Giorgio Gaslini, che nei concerti lo presentava come “l'improvvisatore che viene dalle montagne." Il sassofonista e clarinettista infatti è nato e cresciuto a Nembro, nella Valle Seriana, dove ha mosso i suoi primi passi musicali all'interno della banda locale. Si mise in particolare evidenza quando nel 1978 si esibì in solo nel mitico Europa Jazz, festival organizzato a Imola appunto da Gaslini, ...

Album Review

Gianluigi Trovesi, Gianni Coscia: La misteriosa musica della Regina Loana

Read "La misteriosa musica della Regina Loana" reviewed by Alberto Bazzurro


A trent'anni più o meno esatti dal concerto che ne decretò la nascita (Tortona, 18 luglio 1989), il duo Trovesi/Coscia pubblica quello che è (solo) il suo album n. 5 (di cui quattro, dopo l'iniziale Radici, edito da Egea, su etichetta ECM) e lo fa nel nome di Umberto Eco, di cui Gianni Coscia fu amico per una vita (fin dai banchi di scuola) e Gianluigi Trovesi di conseguenza, dacché frequenta con assiduità il fisarmonicista alessandrino. A ...

Live Review

Bergamo Jazz Festival 2019

Read "Bergamo Jazz Festival 2019" reviewed by Libero Farnè


Bergamo Jazz Festival Varie sedi 21-24.3.2019 Il Bergamo Jazz Festival non cessa di rinnovarsi nella continuità. È stato questo il quarto e ultimo anno della direzione artistica di Dave Douglas. Nel 2020 il testimone passerà nelle mani di Maria Pia De Vito. Scelta opportuna non solo perché la cantante napoletana introdurrà la prima quota rosa nella direzione della pluridecennale manifestazione, ma anche per le innovazioni che sarà in grado di apportare. Erano in particolare ...

Album Review

Gianluigi Trovesi, Umberto Petrin: Twelve Colours and Synesthetic Cells

Read "Twelve Colours and Synesthetic Cells" reviewed by Alberto Bazzurro


Accoppiata ormai di lungo cabotaggio, la Premiata Ditta Trovesi/Petrin giunge solo oggi al suo secondo album, lontano dieci anni esatti dal precedente Vaghissimo ritratto (ECM), dove, per la verità, facevano qua e là capolino anche le percussioni di Fulvio Maras. Se quel capitolo inaugurale aveva diversi numi tutelari, il dedicatario di questo nuovo lavoro è invece il solo Alexandr Skrjabin (attorno al quale, per inciso, Petrin aveva già costruito un suo storico album in duo con Lee Konitz, Breaths and ...

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Music Industry

bargajazz 2001 dedicated to Gianluigi Trovesi

bargajazz 2001 dedicated to Gianluigi Trovesi

Source: All About Jazz


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