Agorà

One of the few professional bands from the Marche, on the Adriatic side of central Italy, Agorà were formed in 1974 near Ancona, and played a jazz-rock very influenced by the likes of Weather Report or the Italian group Perigeo, with a very limited use of progressive sounds. Two of the band members, Bacchiocchi and Colafrancesco, had already made some records first using the name Paolo e Francesco and later as Oz Master Magnus Ltd.

Despite not being so popular they were contacted to play the famous Montreux international jazz festival in Switzerland that gave them a deal with Atlantic. Their first LP was a live album, recorded during that festival. Mostly instrumental and just 30 minutes long, the LP has its moments, with just four long cuts (one of which is curiously split between the two sides of the LP), that often resemble some English jazzy-prog bands of the early 70's.

The second album, in 1976, is much more jazz-rock oriented than the first. The band also played in the 1976 Parco Lambro festival and is featured on the live album released at the time with Cavalcata solare, from their second album and also released on single.

Agorà split in 1978. For a short time that year Pepe Maina played percussion with them, he's also featured in a concert filmed at Montreux but never officially released. Almost all of its members kept playing, among them Ovidio Urbani is still regarded as a very talented player in the jazz field.

In 2002 the group was reformed by four original members (Ovidio Urbani, Renato Gasparini, Mauro Mencaroni and Lucio Cesari), with newcomers Alessandra Pacheco on vocals, jazzmen Giovanni Ceccarelli on piano and Aki Montoya on percussion, and the collaboration of guitarist/producer Maurizio Mercuri. Since 2012 the line-up, initially called Agorà Unplugged featured Urbani, Gasparini, Cesari, guitarist Gabriele Possenti, cellist Gianni Pieri and drummer Massimo Manzi, who was in the 1977-78 line-up. A new CD, Ichinen, already announced a few years before, was finally issued in early 2014, including new and old compositions played by the latest line-up along with some unreleased recordings from 1978. The same line-up released the live album Bombook, with a guest appearance by Patrizio Fariselli from Area, recorded at Progressivamente Free Festival in Rome in September 2015.

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