GIANLUIGI TROVESI OCTET
2003-05-08
Brianza Open Jazz Festival,
Teatro Villoresi, Monza, Italy.
FM BROADCAST
A QUALITY

CDR IN TRADE--EAC FLAC LEVEL 6--DIME.

9 TRACKS......57.10 MINUTES


Gianluigi Trovesi (reeds)
Beppe Caruso (tb)
Massimo Greco (tb)
Marco Remondini (vn, clo)
Roberto Bonati (b)
Marco Micheli (b)
Fulvio Maras (perc)
Vittorio Marinoni (d)


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.
The Italian classic tradition, the contemporary music of the XX Century, the brass bands, dance and night-club tunes, the folk music of his valley, the beloved jazz establish in his music a fruitful dialogue, happily connected by his multi-faceted talent of instrumentalist improvisor and highly original composer.

Trovesi's many and different achievements still precisely dovetail with each other to form a complex, fascinating mosaic where styles, colors and themes entwine to form an ever- expanding tapestry, unified by his talent, imagination and unswerving dedication to creating a music without adjectives, qualifications or boundaries whose only criterion is that it be
sincere and made for the pleasure of providing a new, meaningful experience. Trovesi's music may please audiences, but this is not a commercial ploy. He simply has the magical ability to share with us his own joy in making it. From the instrumental point of view it's an atypical line-up: Trovesi didn't add instruments to the basic jazz quartet or quintet, and instead he created a group of classical symmetry: two percussions, two basses, two brasses, and two instruments with a "wooden" colour like clarinet and cello. It's a double quartet, more similar to the group that Ornette Coleman put together for Free Jazz than to a miniature Big Band. Its sound however it's very different from any of the groups led by the Texan saxophonist, being instead reminiscent of certain Mingus groups or of the Ellington experiments with two basses, all filtered through a typical Italian sensitivity, based on the instrumental schools of Vivaldi and Gabrieli - Bergamo is an area of Venetian influence.

The four instruments of the "rhythm section" have a wide range of option: percussion and drums, electric bass or bass guitar versus double bass, bowed bass versus pizzicato bass, they give Trovesi a lot of possibilities of variation in the rhythmic base, and in the way it is realized, with that harmonic freedom in solos which is opened by the absence of piano.

In the "front-line" the four solo voices only rarely alternate in "sections" big band style, and are instead used to perform complex arrangements with often intricate polyphonies, an effect emphasized by the combination of bowed bass and cello.
Trovesi's music is typically very spacious, never overcharged, and in his arrangements for the Octet he often pares down the group to a trio, similar to the group he started with as a leader, or anchoring the instruments to detailed obbligatos, and readily giving up - when the musical sense of the piece requires it - the role of main soloist.

But the music is not too "written": the structure of the pieces is well defined and logical indeed, but they, in a true jazz spirit, leave always a degree of freedom to the musicians, not only in solo spots - with or without accompaniment, according to the different instruments and personalities - but also in the texture of the piece, that can be modified or enriched according to the improvisational inspiration. Freedom and the pleasure, the "gusto" of playing are key components of Trovesi's music and of Octet's spirit.

Francesco Martinelli