Jazz / Modern Creative; Orchestral Jazz
Gianluigi Trovesi clarinets, alto saxophone
Paolo Manzolini electric guitar, electronics
Fulvio Maras drums, percussion, electronics
Jean-Louis Matinier accordion
Renaud Garcia-Fons bass
Carlo Rizzo tamburello and voice
Stefano Montanari violin
Stefania Trovesi violin
Paolo Ballanti violoncello
One of the most interesting and most popular jazz musicians in Italy, multi-reed player Gianluigi Trovesi presents an ambitious project that beats everything he has done before. Inspired by William Shakespeare's play "A Midsummer Night's Dream" and assisted by some of Europe's top players such as Renaud Garcia-Fons and Jean-Louis Matinier, Trovesi formed a virtuosic nonet consisting of three trios, different in style and function, each of them standing for a certain group of people in Shakespeare's comedy. The royal court of Theseus is represented by a baroque trio consisting of two violins and a cello, the group of artisans by a folkloristic trio with accordion, bass and tamburello, and the divine court of Oberon by a contemporary music trio with reeds, guitar, drums and electronics. Yet - like in Shakespeare's play - the characters in Trovesi's music soon begin to exchange their roles and emotions which leads to a musical journey into deception and dream.
Inspired by a dialogue in the play that quotes a "bergamask" (a traditional dance from the Bergamo area), the nonet's music makes inventive use of old Italian folk dances like the follia, the villanella, the bergamasca and the canzonetta by combining them with improvisation, jazz harmonies, renaissance forms, rock rhythms and contemporary classical sounds. Like the polymorphous spirit of Puck in the comedy, the music jumps from one trio to another, altering constantly and lighting itself up with changing meanings according to the stylistic dress it adopts. As Duke Ellington did with Harlem, Trovesi's opus magnum has made a universal metaphor of his native Bergamo area. |
