Italian jazz

Italian jazz refers to jazz music that is played by Italian musicians, or to jazz music that is in some way connected to Italy.

Origins

James Reese Europe's military concerts in France in World War I in 1919 are claimed to have introduced Europeans to a new, "syncopated" music from America. Yet, Italians had an even earlier taste of a new music from across the Atlantic when a group of "Creole" singers and dancers, billed as the "creators of the cakewalk" performed at the Eden Theater in Milan in 1904. The first real Italian jazz orchestras, however, were formed during 1930s by musicians such as Arturo Agazzi with his Syncopated Orchestra and enjoyed immediate success. In spite of the anti-American cultural policies of the Fascist regime during the 1930s, American jazz remained popular. (Even Romano Mussolini, Benito's son, was a great jazz fan and then prominent jazz pianist.) Also, in 1935, American jazz great Louis Armstrong toured Italy with great success.

In the immediate post-war years jazz took off in Italy. All American post-war jazz styles, from be-bop to Free Jazz and Fusion have their equivalents in Italy. The most gifted exponents of jazz music in this period (from 1940s to 1960s) are musicians like Gorni Kramer, Giorgio Gaslini, Lelio Luttazzi and Franco Cerri, the composer Bruno Martino and great singers like Natalino Otto and Jula de Palma. The universality of Italian culture ensured that jazz clubs would spring up throughout the peninsula, that all radio and then television studios would have jazz-based "house-bands," that Italian musicians would then start nurturing a "home grown" kind of jazz, based on European song forms, classical composition techniques and folk music (for example, in Sicily, where Enzo Rao and his group Shamal have added native Sicilian and Arab influences to American jazz).

Contemporary Italian jazz

Currently, all Italian music conservatories have jazz departments, there are dozens of jazz festivals each year in Italy, the best-known of which is the Umbria Jazz Festival, and there are prominent publications such as the journal, Musica Jazz. In Italy, today, it is virtually impossible to find a medium-sized city without a jazz club.

Notable contemporary Italian jazz Musicians include Enrico Rava, Antonello Salis, Massimo Urbani, Paolo Fresu, Stefano Bollani, Antonio Farao, Dado Moroni, Aldo Romano, Stefano di Battista, Luigi Grasso, bassist Giorgio Rosciglione and Riccardo Del Fra, bassist Pippo Matino, Giovanni Falzone, Giovanni Mirabassi, Enrico Pieranunzi, Gianluigi Trovesi and others members and collaborators of the Italian Instabile Orchestra.

Gianluca Petrella is internationally considered one of the best young jazz trombonists. Italy has many young and promising jazz musicians including Rosario Giuliani, Claudio Quartarone, Marcello Giuliani, Mauro Gargano, Francesco Bearzatti, Michel Rosciglione, Massimo Biolcati and Flavio Boltro.

"Piano,Solo" (2007) is a biographical movie by Riccardo Milani based upon the life of Luca Flores , an Italian jazz piano player .

Michel Petrucciani, André Ceccarelli or Alfio Origlio are notable french musicians whose families come from Italy.

References

• (Italian) Mazzoletti, Adriano (1983). Jazz in Italia. Dalle Origini al dopoguerra. Rome: EDT. ISBN 88-7063-704-2. 

• (German) Cerchiari, Luca (1988). "Jazz in Italien". Exhibit catalogue: That's Jazz. Der Sound des 20. Jahrhunderts (Darmstadt: Institut Mathildenhöhe): 469–476. 

External links

• Umbria Jazz Festival In Perugia, generally in July (the largest such event in Italy)
• Siena Jazz The first and still most prestigious Italian jazz school, hosting the most rich specialized library and sound archive of the country, and organizing a Summer festival (July 24/Aug 8th)
• Running updates on jazz events in Italy
• Jazz museum in Genoa
• "Italian Jazz: Twelve Essential Recordings" by Thierry Quénum (Jazz.com)