Have many musical projects doesn’t mean nourish the distraction, it means focusing into different situations and directions, always close to what is the personal research and development. Each of these collaborations – and how I’ve learn by all these musicians! – has allowed a sort of continuum and progression of my musical ideas and views together, they are a sort of large puzzle, where each anchor adds new elements or removes others, thanks to the peculiar synergy between the musicians involved, as well as the group planning. Obviously it is very difficult to keep alive uncompromising artistic projects and, therefore, outside the music biz establishment, a consequence of the state in which culture is today, at this point annihilated by that totalitarianism called neoliberalism. But I think the duty of every artist should be to pursue with determination and devotion his/her vocation, doesn’t matter if it’s popular or unpopular. Anyway, most of these projects are available for festivals and concerts.
Setoladimaiale Unit
Marco Colonna Bb, C, alto and bass clarinets
Martin Mayes french horn and alphorn
Patrizia Oliva voice and electronics
Alberto Novello analog electronics
Giorgio Pacorig piano
Michele Anelli double bass
Stefano Giust drums and percussion
special guest:
Evan Parker soprano and tenor saxophones
“The Unit presented a particularly intriguing formation. Since it is usual practice of this type of improvisation, the path, a continuous flow without stops, has alternated thickening and thinning. The moments of rarefaction and dismemberment of the group have allowed congenial subgroups to emerge and real solitary spaces. On several occasions the entire collective has expressed a dense, tingling, sonic, saturated concreteness, even though it allows to distinguish the individual contributions. Evan Parker certainly has no sin of protagonism, indeed there are those who say that he has not been granted the space due: in truth, as his colleagues, the English saxophonist has inserted targeted interventions that are always in dialogue with the context.” (on the concert with Parker at Angelica Festival, May 2018) Libero Farnè, Il Giornale Della Musica
“Naturally, at Angelica can not miss improvisation and creative music… if with Anthony Braxton it is difficult to be mistaken, the same we can say of another sacred master as Evan Parker, present with Setoladimaiale Unit, curated by Stefano Giust. Evan Parker is not alone to fly high with his tenor and soprano saxophones, but also excellent colleagues like Martin Mayes with the impressive alphorn, Patrizia Oliva on vocals and electronics, Marco Colonna on clarinets, the same Giust on drums, Michele Anelli on double bass, Giorgio Pacorig on piano and Alberto Novello on analog electronics.” (on the concert with Parker at Angelica Festival, May 2018) Gino Dal Soler, Blow Up
“A true compendium of sound solutions, an example essay illustrating the successful improvisation of a multiform ensemble.” (on the concert with Parker at Jazz Is Dead Festival, May 2019) Andrea Maria Simoniello, The New Noise
“One of the best concerts of the last five years!!!” (on the concert with Parker at ImprovviJazziamo, October 2019) Maurizio Zorzi
“This remarkable recording was made during the 2018 AngelicA International Festival of Music, and to mark the occasion of the Setola di Maiale record label’s 25th anniversary. “Intro” draws up the curtain on this collection with a duo of gongs slowly developing from silence. On “First” Parker doesn’t take over the piece, but neither is his presence subdued. He’s consumed by the group and their communion, emitting traces of his distinct cadence in the sophisticated concoction. “Second” is all the more mysterious and entrancing, with water noise, clarinet, and electronics swirling in a heady dance with the vocals, horns, and piano. The percussion really begins to wallop at around the midpoint, causing the group to roil and the clarinet to sear. Parker lays out his rough eddies over otherworldly vocals and warm percussion as the track fades. Very nice indeed. On “Third” bass clarinet wrestles with the trombone’s forlorn wails and moans, underpinned by a surreal bed of vocals, chimes, and strings. “Fourth” carries in on prickly piano and electronics, the trombone wheezing and hissing like the winds of an alien planet. Malleted cymbal rolls elicit the return to a busier soundscape, subtle and a little strange but more than inviting. The final piece “Fifth” serves as a culmination as well as a crest, the ensemble simmers with all manner of delicious little noises as the instrumentalists trade sentiments. The electronically manipulated vocals add a hallucinatory sense and the crowding of the aural field adds a tinge of anxiety, driving the listener to the edge of some unseen abyss before rolling back from the precipice and vaporizing. A remarkable piece, it’s as enchanting as it is thrilling.” Nick Metzger, Free Jazz Blog
“Recorded by a large group of featured jazz masters. Invention, creativity, imagination, shocking and stunning sound experiments, wild, frash and original ideas and innovative instrumental section – these are the keys of each musician’s playing. The compositions are always based on free improvisation, experimental and avant-garde jazz basics, experimental music, electronics, as well as modern contemporary intonations. Musicians have new and modern conception and original sound – their music is a mix of impulsive, spontaneous, emotional, bright and surprising playing. They never don’t hesitate to try out something new, explore unknown fields and zones of sound by expanding the traditional sound comfort zone. Simply fantastic improvisations. The sound is impressive and dynamic – silent, sophisticated, solemn, deep, heavy, rough. Here’s a huge range of expressions, playing techniques, experiments and tunes who are combined together to create an original and bright sound. Drums and percussion section is wide and dynamic – afroamerican, Western African, American folk, Western Europe academical music rhythms, as well as the typical figures of modern, contemporary, traditional jazz styles are connected to breaking, driving and perturbating sessions and thrilling improvisations. All these elements are gently combined together. The music of this album has fresh, inspiring, effective and original sound.” Rodrigue Bosard, Avant Scena
“Let’s consider the similarities of this large group improvisation to the High Renaissance frescoes. Artists like Michelangelo and Raphael were required to create these masterworks in a rapid manner. The same can be said of the free improvising artists that make up the seven-person Setoladimaiale Unit. The artists—mainstays of this remarkable record label—are joined by composer Philip Corner, Phoebe Neville and master musician Evan Parker. Like a Renaissance fresco there is much detail here. The music could easily be mistaken for a Butch Morris conduction because of the orderliness of the improvised sounds. Amazingly enough, even with this many musicians, there is no conductor. The concert is like an Italian fresco, but one that is not static. Imagine lying on the floor of the Sistine Chapel looking up, and the paintings come to life, then you have some idea what this performance was all about.” Mark Corroto, All About Jazz USA
“This concert serves as a reminder that it is still possible to enjoy decent free music in Italy when the right conditions exist. Bringing together several talented musicians on the Angelica Festival stage and having them escorted by the reeds of wisdom of tutelary deity Evan Parker, label boss Stefano Giust – also featured as a drummer here – provided only a few basic instructions before launching the collective into the 71 minutes that enclose this excellent improvisation. This is a commendable performance by all the participants. The interaction is characterized by often impressive dynamic diversifications and atmospheres changing at the flick of a switch. Most of all, this music never tires the ears, and has a definite reason to survive beyond the celebratory event.” Massimo Ricci, Touching Extremes
“A maximum master of the soprano sax is certainly the Englishman Evan Parker, who in 2018 during the Angelica Festival in Bologna, was the guest of a Setola di Maiale Unit aimed at celebrating the 25th anniversary of the worthy Italian label, particularly focused to the avant-garde. One octet is at work, with strong names such as Marco Colonna, Martin Mayes, Giorgio Pacorig and above all Stefano Giust, in the specific percussionist, who is the authentic deus ex-machina of the label, an octet dedicated to free improvisation, with rather solid results. Excellent choral and individual moments.” Alberto Bazzurro, L’Isola Della Musica Italiana
“Album on Perfect Sound Forever 2019: Top Ten Writers’ Poll” by Daniel Barbiero
“Setoladimaiale Unit & Evan Parker, in addition to being a splendid celebration, is also an ideological link to the frame of artistic independence and political conviction that Parker has lavished on his life; there is an anti-liberal thought that is being discussed in economy, developed to make social and income inequalities more and more important: the splendid ensemble’s musicians almost wear it, in the vibrations of their instruments, each of them has the advantage of avoiding those ‘clinical’ situations of improvisation that often afflict the performances: here the dosages of the dynamics are perfect, there are no abuses in power and the balances slide in absolute freedom and in full communion of intent, a CD conceived in its basic settings, but absolutely left to the creativity and spontaneity of the individual musicians.
There is a thought of Giust that accesses the matter of conducting; today there is a lot of talk about the legacies of Butch Morris and the need to follow the organic in a certain way, but an emotional impact can also be found in collective forms free from methods: “for me this is an essential point: although not having nothing against conducting – every musical strategy finds my favors – it is possible to have a music that is self-structured, because it is already in its nature. At the most it is necessary a general indication to facilitate this possibility, to emphasize it, because it is my conviction that, when you have a group of artists, improvisers, aware of the responsibility that each one has in the performance of music, it hardly happens that you lose control, the music itself gives indications, constantly, you just have to listen and feel part of all, even if this sometimes means not playing.”
Then, it is obligatory to look at the internal notes written by Giust, which speaks of “some vague and poetical indications” suggested to the ensemble, a string of words that intrigued me and prompted me to ask Stefano their revelation: these musical indications are a way to track music and these are phrases that lead to subliminal behavior to be kept during the performance; among these, I have focused on the reflection that proclaims “we play a ‘modern’, visionary, intimate and unheard music.” I return the feelings I felt in listening, in the division of the 6 parts of the improvisation… Given these effects of listening, can I not admit that this is a ‘modern’, visionary, intimate and unheard of music?” Ettore Garzia, Percorsi Musicali“Recommended!” The New York City Jazz Record
“The sound flow is homogeneous and obviously dialogues and conversations alternate, between the various components of the group, now abstract, now more concrete and thick. There is no claim to impose subversions, to generate formulas and styles – expression of hierarchies -, to satisfy selfishness, but only a listening request, which is to share a vital experience. Some modules proceed according to quite usual cadences, such as research of density alternating with lyricism and rarefactions, creating spaces soon filled with color backgrounds. Music breathes, finding a reason for complexity, which knows how to transcend.” Sandro Cerini, Musica Jazz
“With a lightness that one would not think of, the effect of a force that draws and lifts, this hour and more, fly away. The drummer has gathered musicians who have published for the bet-label (now winning) in the twenty-fifth birthday, to try again the way of free improvisation. What is generated is a biotope sound, an organic complex where the writing of the scene gives space to choral moments of dramatic passion. The landscapes vary, they are harsh of fragmented interplays yet connected. The music runs and jumps from unevenness to clearings, where ‘themes’ are take us back from falls in informal foam. Music as the physiology of existence. (8)” Dionisio Capuano, Blow Up
“Crafting a musically cohesive, uncongested free improvisation with a small group is hard enough. It become much more difficult the larger the ensemble. Some large groups have been able to manage this nicely. Add to their number the Setoladimaiale Unit, an ensemble headed by percussionist Stefano Giust. The hour-long improvisation is tracked into five sections prefaced by Corner and Neville’s introduction. Each section highlights some aspect of the group’s work, usually on the basis of the many subgroupings that emerge over the course of the set. What’s remarkable is that there was no conducting or direction; the changes in dynamics and density and the frequent interludes for solos, duos, and trios were arrived at spontaneously. Each player has some time as a leading voice if not a soloist; there are beautiful soliloquies for piano and drums, and instances of impromptu polyphony breaking out among the horns. It’s exactly the kind of playing one would expect from some of Europe’s most sensitive improvisers, and a happy anniversary indeed.” Daniel Barbiero, Avant Music News
“Setola di Maiale… Obviously 25 years of doing this and accumulating such a catalogue deserves acknowledgement and celebration. Label head and drummer Stefano Giust organized a septet of musicians associated with the label and added a notable guest in the form of saxophonist Evan Parker to perform at the 2018 Angelica Festival. They performed a 71-minute set of free improvisation. It’s a truly impressive document. The music ebbs and flows and while things can get heated at times, it’s clearly a group effort. The band will break off into various subgroups and the music all seems to flow naturally. These 8 musicians are here to contribute to the unified whole and all do so successfully. It’s a remarkable performance right down to the final wind down and it’s all well-worth hearing.” Robert Iannapollo, Cadence Magazine
“Of special interest!” Cadence Magazine
“Album on Cadence Top Ten Recordings 2019: Top Ten Critic’s Pick” by Zim Tarro
“It was an integral part of AngelicA – International Music Festival # 28 – that on 26 May 2018 a performance was held that in a simple, direct, synthetic, but not reductive way, can only be classified through the use of an adjective: epic. The reason: the Setola di Maiale label celebrated its 25th anniversary. On this occasion, the Unit has become part of an authentic living myth of free improvisation, Evan Parker. The importance of the Bristolian in the European experimental scene is as deep as its roots. Parker was one of the flagships of free improvisation in Europe and, together with the late Derek Bailey, was one of the researchers who transported British improvisational music to the world in the 1970s. This union is, therefore, an affirmation of the artistic and musical character of Setola di Maiale, a label which, according to the suggestive but correct words of its founder, Stefano Giust, “is a pure commercial utopia” in a culture damaged by “growing neoliberalism”. There are five totally free improvisations, totaling around 70 minutes. The interaction and communication of the group is brilliant: questions and answers are often heard, intentional intertwining, unexpected harmonizations, rhythmic complements, passages of testimony, silences of some elements that create melodic dynamics, consonances and dissonances.
In short: Setoladiamaiale Unit & Evan Parker, Live at Angelica 2018, is an essential document of European free improvisation – highly recommended, if it still needs to be said.” João Morado, Beats for Peeps“The Setoladimaiale Unit was assembled by drummer Stefano Giust, who runs the Setola di Maiale label. It’s a sextet with vocals, gongs and electronics, working in the very productive area between free jazz and free improv.” Julian Cowley, The Wire
“Six mighty improv collaborations helmed by Setoladimaiale’s founder/drummer Stefano Giust. The music here is mostly unsettling and explosive. It’s not an especially easy listen, despite the cleverly nuanced approach where intensity often gives way to passages that rumble. On one hand, it’s a firm, avant-garde sledgehammer to an already battered cranium, and on the other it’s hard not to completely appreciate not only the great playing here, but also the uncomfortable spaces it compels us to traverse. Philip Corner and Phoebe Neville appear on the intro as well, playing gongs in a manner perfect for the setting to follow.” RJ, Progress Report
“Musicians who master the art of free improvisation down to the last detail.” Ben Taffijn, Nieuwe Noten
“In the case of a recording of improvised music, the impact is often less, even more in the case of big ensembles. But this release is a pleasant exception to this. First, the recording is excellent and transparent and secondly because the improvisation is very ‘accessible’ in a way and unfolding itself in one undivided and consistent movement. During the long period, the performers behave like one giant organism fulfilling the conditions to stay in one constant organic flow. Incredible all this is instantly improvised without a conductor. The performers were very good attuned to one other as this improvisation has focus and body from start to finish. Of course, the improvisation undergoes different phases, with different performers or sections of performers in the forefront. A true abundance of styles, atmospheres, colouring, dynamics, pass by during this journey. A joy!” Dolf Mulder, Vital Weekly
“Whether ad-hoc or regularly organized, committed to interpreting compositions or pure improvisation, little big bands can serve as flexible vehicles for musical expression. Confirmed instances here of how to define speculative sounds in a little big band setting.” Ken Waxman, Jazz Word
“For the 25th anniversary of his utopian label, Setola di Maiale, percussionist Stefano Giust has collected the best Italian improvisers and invited Evan Parker to join a concert in Bologna at the AngelicA 2018 festival. Question: how is it possible, in the group of organizers / freelancers / critics / affiliates of free music, to still neglect a drummer and an activist such as Stefano Giust, head of the Setola di Maiale label who is here on the 388th album in the catalog? A true figure who mainly plays with the high level musicians, Stefano makes all the cover artworks and deals with the production of an exceptional diversity of artists, in fact all that in Italy counts with sound performances, alternative electronic composers, ingenious guitarists, libertarian jazz poets, free improvisers and utopian orchestras: an attitude of solidarity with the cause rather than an artistic direction “specialized” elitist. Without doubt, one of the most generous, passionate and altruistic people on the international scene, and also an excellent drummer / percussionist. In SDM I heard remarkable attempts by artists who have come a long way since then. In the SDM Unit, we have to talk about singer Patrizia Oliva who deals with the sound of her voice with electronics, the Roman clarinetist Marco Colonna, probably one of the most important “blowers” of the peninsula, pianist Giorgio Pacorig, noticed and revealed by the excellence of his piano work in this recording, horn player Martin Mayes, a native York who has lived in Turin for decades and who was part of the Instabile Italian Orchestra, the Turin double-bass player Michele Anelli, an activist in the city for excellence, Alberto Novello with analogue electronics. The composer Philip Corner and the choreographer Phoebe Neville begin the concert with the Gongs for the Intro. Although this exhibition has been ‘not prepared’, except for some indications by Stefano Giust and that Evan Parker prefers not to pose as a leader, leaving the music to do respecting everyone’s freedom, we can distinguish sequences, successive parts that spontaneously connect with a certain logic, individual voices are affirmed in the foreground and significantly supported by others (Giust in the first place). A true cooperative partnership that brings together improvisers of common accord and shared energy. The common denominator: faith in human, social, cultural values remarkably highlighted in the music of Live at Angelica.” Jean-Michel Van Schouwburg, Orynx-improvandsounds
“Very beautiful.” Nicola Negri, Centro d’Arte di Padova
“Absolutely free music, even with the few indications offered by Stefano Giust, soul of the label and coordinator of the ensemble, which is documented on this CD. As often happens in cases of instant creation, it is not easy to give an idea of the development of music, which changes continuously and unpredictably. Limiting oneself to general indications, the slow and almost meditative atmosphere of the work, which only occasionally finds some dynamically and rhythmically moments more intense – for example, in the fourth part with a crescendo guided by the tenor of Parker, by the double bass of Michele Anelli and from Giust’s drums, or at the end of the album, with the only moment of magmatic chaos, still guided by the tenor of the British – and his collective character, although marked by the alternation of the intervention of the individuals, without however anyone ever rise as starring if not in short fragments. Substantially consistent work, with moments of strong suggestion.” Neri Pollastri, All About Jazz
“This live is delicate, responsive and thunderous in the result. Free and dazzling music, which clears up and confuses electronic inputs and acoustic gusts, traceable forms and abstraction, a lot of magic, short solos, disruptions and courageous real-time reassembly. Dilations, contractions and new expansion. Tradition and contemporaneity. Best wishes to Setola, the gift to us.” Marco Carcasi, Kathodik
“Describing this recording in all details is impossible, because everything is so meticulously put together and one reaction follows accurately and especially organically, the other. A continuous maelstrom of small shifts that always lead to new ideas. This recording is a powerful and convincing statement about the vision of the label. Respect for Stefano Giust and his group to maintain such standards in these times of commercial populism and to put creative idealism first.” Georges Tonla Briquet, Jazz’halo
“Big bangs, seismic swarms, apparitions, disappearances, revelations, floods, crystal clear truths, perfect lies, flashes, haiku, satori, the same urgency and cosmic threat that animates for example certain treasures of the Actuel catalog: the art of improvisation caught in the moment of a very high inspiration, for a music that is impossible to say with words but that must be listened to and purchased, supporting those who have been ‘damaging their soul’ since 1993 to remind us that another jazz is possible. A piece of plastic that contains universes, enclosed in 71 minutes of uncatchable music. A psychoactive matryoshka that open, you can discover that an afternoon can last a century, and vice versa.” Nazim Comunale, The New Noise
Setola di Maiale celebrated its 25th anniversary at Angelica Festival 2018 with this ensemble (still available for concerts). On that occasion – it was a sold out concert and subsequently released on CD – we played together with a very special guest musician, the British saxophonist Evan Parker, a crucial researcher in the field of improvised music. In that evening there was also an unexpected off-program, an introduction on gongs by American composer Philip Corner (among the fathers of Fluxus) and his wife, choreographer, dancer and musician Phoebe Neville. With slightly different line-ups (with Daniele Pagliero and Massimo De Mattia), the ensemble played two more concerts together with Parker in 2019: on May 26th in Turin at the Jazz Is Dead Festival (broadcast in full by Battiti Radio Rai Tre on December 15th of the same year; furthermore an excerpt was used for a documentary about the Belgian artist Yves Zurstrassen) and at ImprovviJazziamo in Pordenone, on October 13rd. Setoladimaiale Unit is formed by musicians who play free improvisation without protections, there are just some vague and poetical indications by me. Curiosity, the name Setoladimaiale Unit was used before only in 1999, when we played with two different line-ups (with me were Luca Cartolari, Dominik Gawara, Paolo Caleo, Maurizio Suppo, Ivan Pilat, Daniele Pagliero, Alessandro Cartolari and Michele Brieda) at the 48th Venice Biennale (at Chiostro Tolentini and at the Italian Pavilion).
NoNoNo Percussion Ensemble
Gino Robair percussion, electronics and prepared piano
Cristiano Calcagnile drums, percussion and electronics
Stefano Giust drums and percussion
“Gino Robair, Cristiano Calcagnile and Stefano Giust, endowed with responsive acumen, and aware of the inmost aspects of interrelational dynamics, these three instrumentalists have put their craft at the service of an unwavering artistry which is undoubtedly free of any self-serving undertones. The trio was able to originate a kinetic system that sounds both organic and graceful. One of NoNoNo’s greatest qualities is probably the ability to derive intricate structures and tactile pleasures from interlocking parts born as idiosyncratic spurts. The skillful contributions of Robair, Calcagnile and Giust have resulted in an expressive fluidity that never implies monotony, owing – beyond the obvious intricacies – to the natural beauty of the skins flexing beneath the drumsticks and the power of the metals resonating in our skulls. There is more than simply percussion, though. Subtleties of a prepared piano, well placed electronics, a tabletop guitar that occasionally provides some chiming. While there’s no denying the trio’s improvisational singularity, it is understandable in the more “percussively complex” passages, certain listeners could feel rather close to pages torn from Edgard Varèse’s book. And, get this, they might even pick up on vague AMM-ish shades where NoNoNo’s chiaroscuros suggest floating dust illuminated by oblique rays of light. Through deft, forceful yet not violent motions, their joint instrumental quintessence radiates diversity.” Massimo Ricci, Touching Extremes
“All three are accomplished percussionists and improvisers and have played with big names. There’s a sense of space in the music, and it’s more texture-based than melodic, although once in a while, the prepared piano and high frequencies made using the cymbal and drumstick can be heard. As these men are all accomplished improvisers, the interaction is phenomenal. Although most tracks are relatively long, the music or sounds are never dull. I find it hard to describe the music. Therefore I say this: give it a spin! Highly recommended as this is thoughtful, balanced and highly imaginative music.” DSM, Vital Weekly
“Over the years and with more than 400 releases, the Italian label Setola di Maiale hits ever stronger. With these three percussionists united as one man, we have a truly unusual project. In the evolution of free music there has long been a trend supported by many percussionists to express themselves and record as soloists or in percussion duets such as Milford Graves and Andrew Cyrille or the pair Paul Lovens and Paul Lytton. And here is the NoNoNo Percussion Ensemble with fascinating variety and dynamic sound! Reading their instrumentarium, we tell ourselves that their sound palette must be rich in sounds, timbres, screeches, discoveries. Well… yes! It is in fact a true masterpiece in unstable balance, in turn delicate and clean, expressive and surprisingly varied. Many surprising techniques and sound approaches are solicited with a sense of continuity, mutual enrichment, diversity, from the subtle to the grandiose. The percussion is enriched with fine electronic efflorescence, fragments of a prepared piano. Three musicians who rattle off the same story, an improvised narration that evokes without emphasis and with the utmost joy, Ionization, the masterpiece of Edgar Varèse, a milestone in contemporary music. The kind of album that you can listen to and listen to over the hours without finishing grasping all the ramifications and implications, the vibrating, sonic, frictional angles and cracks, the whispers of the unspeakable. A veritable manifesto of avant-garde percussion with a strong sense of form.” Jean-Michel Van Schouwburg, Orynx-improvandsounds
“Magical improvisation. Three musicians manifest a power, that of reversing the magic of evil. In Angelica, 2019, the inextricable interweaving of the ensemble acts on a different level than the mere percussive set, goodness also of the use of electronics and the prepared piano (Robair), electrified metal sheets and other effects (Calcagnile) and a tireless multidimensional texture (Giust). That exorcism called creativity is realized, capable of snatching a smile of liberation. Rating: 8.” Dionisio Capuano, Blow Up
“The performances consist of finely-tuned textural music in which timbre and dynamics take the place of melody and harmony as organizing qualities. Contrasts of metal and membrane intermixed with electronic percolations; marimba-like interventions on prepared piano framed on either side by conventional drumkit; bowed and scraped cymbals over low-frequency tones—these and other sounds make up these constantly changing sonic fabrics. The ensemble’s effort is a truly collective one, and although the mix effectively separates the voices, with Giust on the left, Robair in the center, and Calcagnile on the right, all three musicians are expert colorists and sympathetic listeners able to complement each other with whatever nuance or shading is needed at any given moment.” Daniel Barbiero, Avant Music News
“The three percussionists identify a transformative form of their instruments which is realized through a particular instrumental sensitivity, the one that wants to obtain “intuitions” or “apprehensions” without having to worry about pre-established canons and which could theoretically reproduce rhetorical scenarios; the sensitivity of the three percussionists is not based only on the recognized power of the percussive ensembles but on a broadening of the electroacoustic horizons. Each of the three musicians autonomously brings their own piece into the music: Robair uses some electronic devices (small granulations, deconstructions that simulate rather recurrent abstrusities in improvisational electroacoustics) and above all he inserts broken pieces of prepared piano here and there; Calcagnile detects extensions on a drumtable guitar and on electrified metal sheets, while Giust is an excellent polyrhythmic piston enriched by ample sound stimuli throught cymbals (hisses, blows with diverging intensity, management of pauses, etc.). In the Excantatious CD everything happens simultaneously, the connections go hand in hand with the intuitions and you don’t even need to have them in front of you to create a prelogical organization of the music: just listen to the music and try to identify a “protective” language, where sorcerers and superstitions they are frozen in a positive, natural power, completely open to sharing.” Ettore Garzia, Percorsi Musicali
“I was finally able to listen to the NoNoNo Percussion Ensemble CD. Very beautiful and interesting! In my opinion, it is a refined and engaging “free jazz”. It is rare to find a percussion CD of this level.” Giuseppe Giuliano, composer
“A six-handed CD by the American Gino Robair and our Cristiano Calcagnile and Stefano Giust. The work, eminently modern contemporary music, moves around thin, essential sounds, sometimes even backward, which love to surround themselves with large areas of silence and in any case favor the pianissimo, the meditative, the decongested.” Alberto Bazzurro, L’Isola Della Musica Italiana
“Recorded at Teatro San Leonardo in Bologna, this improvisation between the three musicians travels like a marvel. A sequence plan of intoned scattered contrasts and organic matter that winds through large expansions and polyrhythmic percussive circularities, urged to play on the hiss of frequencies, sorties of piano and small electronic bubbles (on electroacoustic positioning). The American Robair says, of a positive ritualistic quality that emerged upon listening, a capacity of sound to chase away unwanted spells. So much bliss of the instant. Rating: 8.” Marco Carcasi, Kathodik
“New CD from the Italian improvisation label par excellence, Setola di Maiale, and it’s a fascinating listening experience. With various percussion instruments, prepared piano, drums, glockenspiel, electrified metal sheet, cymbals and electronics, the trio worked for seventy-five minutes. We hear a succession of subtle changes, bizarre combinations of sounds, tremendous scratches and sometimes a ‘real’ piano. The three musicians clearly have their own codes which gradually bring the listener into a trance. In no time a hesitation breaks the spell.” Georges Tonla Briquet, Jazz’halo
This percussionist ensemble was born in 2019 for a recording session at Teatro San Leonardo in Bologna, for the CD entitled Excantatious (Setola di Maiale, 2021). As Gino wrote, the music on this record has a positive, ritualistic quality, so the titles were chosen around the concept of freeing by enchantment and reverse magic as to release oneself from a spell. Music is free improvisation close to contemporary music. The ensemble also has a natural vocation to become a ‘platform’ for soloists, a quality that the three musicians would like to investigate in the future.
Politácito
María ‘Mange’ Valencia alto sax and clarinet
Paolo Pascolo flute, bass flute and tenor sax
Stefano Giust drums and percussion
“Superbly well done recording of a highly inspired concert devoted entirely to free and generously open improvised expression. Sensitive fluttering winds and delightfully sonorous, fragile, suspended in the auditory field, sustained notes, rippling vibrations, subtle tremors, poetry of spontaneous narrations… Between Maria and Paolo the understanding is perfect. Through these concentrated improvisations, there is absolutely Stefano Giust’s extraordinary playing with every percussive object struck, rubbed, resonant, bounced, scratched. His studied polyrhythm and the great variety of his strokes, their remarkable legibility capture the listening and the attention of the listener. The beautiful nuances of the touch of the cymbals and the discreet random rolls on the skins lead to constant movement, to an impalpable scansion. This man holds some secrets of free drumming, invisible drive-swing, sound research and a style all of him. This is followed by a magnificent union of ideas, feelings, sounds and timbres within an atypical trio. Here is a trio from vulgar free-jazz that completely changes us from the habits, tics and clichés regurgitated elsewhere.” Jean-Michel Van Schouwburg, Orynx-Improv and Sound
“The music is sparse, spacious and intimate. That’s not to say there are no moments of fury or turmoil, but it’s all relatively quiet and meditative, which is not to say it’s boring, far from it. ‘Puntiagudos ocultos’ starts with long intertwining lines in alto sax and flute, accompanied by crazy rhythms and textures concocted by Giust. He has a beautiful solo spot in the same piece. The two woodwind players react to each other with agility and speed, creating a dialogue in which, sometimes, one ends a sentence, and the other one begins. Forty minutes long, this is an excellent release by musicians who listen intently to each other and get wonderful sounds, textures and sometimes melodies across. I hope there will be a follow-up release in the future.” MDS, Vital Weekly
“Matching two horns with only one accompanying instrument is a challenge, since each player must fill melodic or rhythmic gaps potentially exposed by this miniaturization. This trio show what can be done. Depending on Italian drummer Stefano Giust’s cadences, Ricordi Del Tardigrado’s three long improvisations also work off the intersection of timbres from Italian flutist/saxophonist Paolo Pascolo and Columbian saxophonist/clarinetist Mària ‘Mange’ Valencia. Pascolo has worked with Giorgio Pacorig; Valencia with Ingebrigt Håker Flaten; and Giust with numerous international improvisers. Twisting and turning among flute peeps, tenor saxophone slurs and drum paradiddles, the members of Politácito expand the interface on top of Giust’s nerve beats, rim shots and slaps by blending thin transverse variations from the flute with strained flattement and shrieks from the saxophone.” Ken Waxman, Jazz Word
“A great capacity for interaction and for weaving melodies and continuous dialogue clearly emerges. Giust’s counterpoint is incredible, always present and alert, always attentive to every slightest variation, ready to dialogue and return new emotions. Congratulations indeed, excellent work!” Renato Sclaunich
“Free improvisation is an encounter, a crossroads of latent sensations, often also the domain of surreal worlds. A beautiful encounter took place for a concert that saw Paolo Pascolo and Stefano Giust play together with the Colombian saxophonist/clarinetist Maria ‘Mange’ Valencia. It must be said that Valencia is also very active outside the borders of its country and has an eclectic vision of music that does not lose sight of any genre; in about twenty years of activity it has been present in many formations always looking for musical languages that have a new “face”. Recently she has even become the spokesperson for a research on contemporary Colombian composition, presenting a good lot of female composers to be discovered. Naturally, there is no shortage of improvisation sessions, which are somewhat the fulcrum of her interests and the performance in Udine, merged into Politácito, is a good way to test political ability and obstinacy.The set is very attractive because it moves in a veiled and unverified asynchrony of the minds where one can trace the essences of a musical condition, treatments that they arrive on the basis of intuition but work on a hidden meaning. The trio’s political significance lies in the subtitling of Politácito, when referring to Memories of Tardigrade. The tardigrade is one of the most resistant animals on Earth, capable of living without water for decades, of withstanding very high temperatures, radiation and high sea pressures, of being tolerant even of the lack of gravity. Well, this explanation is useful for claiming a genre and a cultural fidelity, because the improvisation of the trio has all the appearance of wanting to adhere to that idea of resistance against the aggression of a music which today has a strong loss of identity.” Ettore Garzia, Percorsi Musicali
“There are no direct references or landmarks, they seem to be in a vacuum.” Georges Tonla Briquet, Jazz’halo
“The group’s sound is dominated by a concern for texture in its various manifestations, ranging from densely packed to openly spaced. The interplay between the two wind instruments tends to take the form of a dialectic of massing and dispersing. Tying it all together is Giust’s free-rhythm drumming. Giust here as on other recordings demonstrates himself to be a dedicated and discerning colorist with a sure touch, using sticks, brushes, and hands to elicit a wide world of sounds from all parts of the drum kit and cymbals.” Daniel Barbiero, Avant Music News
The Politácito trio play improvised music and was born on the occasion of a concert in 2022, then published in the CD titled Ricordi del Tardigrado for Setola di Maiale (SM4530) and released in the spring of 2023. María is a musician improviser and composer from Bogotà (Colombia), active in the fields of experimental music and well known for her presence as musician in concert with The Meridian Brothers, since their inception. With Paolo the collaboration is long-standing with Aghe Clope, Haiku and impromptu ensembles. The trio collaborates with the visual artist (live analogic visuals) Wandalumen, aka Francesco Scarel. Politácito is a word that actually does not exist (Poli – Tacit).
De Mattia / Pacorig / Maier / Giust
Massimo De Mattia flutes
Giorgio Pacorig piano
Giovanni Maier double bass
Stefano Giust drums and percussion
“Quietly yet decisively, a new generation of Italian improvisers has made its presence felt internationally during the past decade and a half, definitely including the four who created the suite that makes up this memorable disc.” Ken Waxman, Jazz Word
(Album of the month for Musica Jazz, n. 810) “Free music, born from mutual listening and instantaneous relationship, always inspired by an elegiac and pure lyricism, which allows it to hover, almost indifferent to matter. The alea, which here is never an indistinct randomness, given the harmony of the quartet, takes shape in colors, sensations, breath, sound, ‘life’, composing, at last, a beautiful ‘suite’, to be contemplated.” Sandro Cerini, Musica Jazz
“The habit of being comforted, confirmed in our laughable certainties. The stale taste of so much jazz that is nothing but calligraphy, postcard. Setola di Maiale, the improvisation label of the drummer Stefano Giust, has been moving for 25 years against this attitude. “Desidero Vedere, Sento” is a declaration of intent. I close my eyes and I see the inside: a steep, extended, non-Euclidean world, full of beautiful traps, oblique and perfect mechanisms, everything shines in the geometric spider burrs of the case, the die is cast, the Rubicon is crossed as well as the comfort zone, the quartet is in a pure state of grace. The CD frolls you in the head like a portable and silent psychoanalyst: just put the magic disk in the stereo, turn up the volume, and let the images flow. Set sail towards the unspeakable, in the ocean of open sound, rediscover the wonder. An important CD, illuminated by a difficult and dark grace, lyrical and surly at the same time, as if all over the improvisation hovered a sense of threat, of unfavorable wind (that is the wind of the news?). A navigation off course that for fifty minutes it gives us four musicians capable of discovering new territories once again.” Nazim Comunale, Il Giornale Della Musica
“Around free improvisation still lingering ghosts hard to die. To see musicians go on stage not only without scores, but not even with a shred of preventive agreement on how to move is experienced by many with annoyance, like an intellectual attitude. Too bad because, and this recording shows it amply, the provision for collective improvisation is one of the most beautiful challenges for those who play. Also for those who listen. Actually De Mattia, Pacorig, Maier and Giust took to the stage of the Teatro San Leonardo of Bologna – in the context of Angelica Festival – with a vast repertoire: their stories, their memory, their talent, curiosity, experiences, researches and availability to risk. All unique materials to be managed in the collective dialogue, with listening and complicity. Not easy. Yet the four show an extraordinary instantaneous compositional ability that translates into a continuous sound stream full of shared ideas, rips, silences, inaudible sounds, visions and poetry. A CD that should be programmed in some gray rooms of music education, to turn on lights.” Paolo Carradori, Alafabeta2
“The quartet often changing compositional algorithms: from slow additions of sounds, which then become linear melodies, to sudden destructions made by subtraction, sudden and fast. Construction and destruction, accelerations and unexpected stops, express an alive, multiform and spectacularly extreme sound ensemble.” Roberto Paviglianiti, Strategie Oblique
“Beautiful Italian team live at Angelica by flute expert Massimo De Mattia, enlighted pianist Giorgio Pacorig ubiquitous peninsula bassist Giovanni Maier and Setola di Maiale hyperactive producer and clever drummer Stefano Giust.” “Desidero Vedere, Sento is an excellent moment in the life of these four artists, full of musicality, intense listening and spontaneous sharing, a serene lyricism that guides us to secret moments, elegiac weightlessness, unspeakable fragrances and deconstructed images. A great success based on a thorough relationship on total improvisation and a democratic conception for each instrument / personality in the sound space.” Jean-Michel Van Schouwburg, Improjazz/Orynx-improvandsounds
“A combo of extraordinary improvisers. The four musicians move within a free dimension, free of any conditioning but, for this reason, very dangerous because the risk of falling into mannerism, in the obvious is around the corner: just a fall in tension, an input not good received and the omelette is made, you don’t go back. Well, none of this is perceived by listening to the music: vice versa, the passion, the dedication, the spontaneity, the intellectual honesty of these four artists, who are considered – not by chance – among the best improvisers not only of our country.” Gerlando Gatto
“Really beautiful.” Marcello Piras
“This music is the result of the mastery of these four musicians. From the first listen it is immediately clear the skills of De Mattia, Pacorig, Maier and Giust: not only for the qualities of the individual musician, but also for the harmony and the comparison that they express by improvising together, emphasizing individuality but playing like an only one thing at the same time. The five tracks of the album are a mixture of jazz and contemporary music but not academic, lively and sparkling music: from the continuous leaks to the moments of suspension, all in the complexity maintains a strong sense of narrative, almost visual. Making this music not only “beautiful” but also “pleasant” is an important point in favor. There remains only the regret of not having been in the room that evening.” “A truly exceptional album!” Emiliano Grigis, Sodapop
“Improvising quartet spreading some musical love…” Tom Sekowski, All About Jazz USA
“A high symbolic value can be attributed to this meeting: it demonstrates that even Italian improvisation has its physiognomy and presents here some of its best representatives. The concert is a point of arrival, informs us on how much has been done in improvisation, it’s a flow of technical and emotional summary, which comes from an experience decidedly internalized by musicians, who over time have created their own standard. Desidero Vedere, Sento is free fuel, it’s full of dynamics and flies high in the imagination induced by music; it is the sum of the parts and their styles: the pindaric and atonal flights of De Mattia, the three-dimensional pianism of Pacorig, the ups and downs in the punctuation of Maier and the detailed nervous sound applied by Giust. If someone believes that the memory of music may come out of rules, meters or combinations well studied and especially focusing on certain points of reference, with Desidero Vedere, Sento, he will necessarily have to change his mind, because this is the ideal place to start thinking definitively to a different construction of the musical sensation, its articulations and its effects.” Ettore Garzia, Percorsi Musicali
“One of the top albums of 2018, according to Percorsi Musicali.” Ettore Garzia
“The quartet that signs Desidero Vedere, Sento is varied and vital, there is a climate that is now more intense and nervous, now more volatile, always clear and legible.” Alberto Bazzurro
“Four protagonists of the Italian improvisation scene devise here new live materials. Influences of all kinds and the displacement of various support surfaces belong to their box of tricks. They knead structures like plasticine, filling the time and space assigned to them in an optimal way. Appeared on the label of Italian improvisation for excellence.” Georges Tonla Briquet, Jazz’halo
“A remarkable synthesis of musical languages and an aesthetic sense of great enjoyable. The path that starts from free jazz and passes countless experiences of contamination is truly effective and intelligent.” Gianpaolo Salbego
“I have to thank the four musicians who played this music. I thank them for the indomitable spirit, for the purity and honesty of the gesture. I thank them for having given to the press a music that vibrates in the World so crazy to be wonderful. A music so high that only contemplating it compels me to applaud. It forces me for honesty and duty to express the merit of this wonderful experience, without it, much would be more difficult.” Marco Colonna
“A classic example of improvisation, in which the inventions of musicians are bound thanks to the listening and instantaneous responses that their remarkable agreement favors. And the singles are not avaricious neither of inventions, nor of brilliant sounds. And it is the pursuit of these voices, the interweaving of the sounds, their very free accelerate and decelerate, pry off and subside, to compose the fabric of a music to follow, internalize and meditate. A music that surprises with every listening and that, as always the ‘successful improvisations’, risks making all the other listeners appear ‘boring’.” Neri Pollastri, All About Jazz
This quartet is born for a concert held for the Concert Season 2016/2017 of Angelica, at Teatro San Leonardo in Bologna. It is available the CD entitled “Desidero Vedere, Sento”, published by Setola di Maiale, with Ken Waxman’s liner notes (there is a small excerpt above).
Mahakaruna Quartet
Giorgio Pacorig piano
Cene Resnik tenor sax
Gabriele Cancelli cornet and trumpet
Stefano Giust drums and percussion
“This group is a true force of nature. Great dialogues between the sax of Resnik and the cornet of Cancelli, rich and never predictable Pacorig’s piano, free and anti-rhetoric Giust on drums. Free music and the beauty of what is not predictable and indefinable are a political choice, a long, fertile flow of inventions. A very nice album to which to return in time, played and composed by musicians to follow, without reservations.” Nazim Comunale, The New Noise
“Critiquing the world of necessary, but often spirit-deadening work with an almost 70-minute improvisation, pianist Giorgio Pacorig’s arrangements for the Mahakaruna Quartet’s emphasize musical freedom at the expense of agit-prop. The happy result is that the music can be appreciated for the manner in which this Italian-Slovenian quartet sophistically handles the genre-bending material, no matter your politics. Satisfaction with the sonic program unequivocally masks any political message. A polyphonic roller coaster trip, with all the thrills intact, Inventum should be celebrated for what it achieves musically, not the political and economic ideas it doesn’t simplistically define.” Ken Waxman, Jazz Word
“The improvised element is raging, sometimes even turbulent, vociferous, but intermittently more disposed towards that folk song, that is typical of the songs arranged for the occasion by Pacorig. Another great way to “sing” the work.” Bazzurro, Musica Jazz
“The original folk songs, originally melodic, have here an ‘industrial’ or ‘mechanical’ densities and thus divert the aesthetics of these popular pieces, merging them together in one process. Exceptional examples are Addio Lugano, Le 8 Ore and Canto Dei Battipali. The merging of the two worlds is best reflected in the Cantigas Do Maio, where the epic and, at the same time, melodic and experimental music, is looking for a wider sound space. In this way, the listener receives a significant message for the times we live: work equipment is no longer exclusive tools, we have people who become dehumanized; machines are no longer just robots.” Nina Novak, Sigic
“A path in which songs from the popular tradition emerge as thematic ghosts in collective improvisations. The atmosphere is dreamlike: Giust’s pulverized rhythm and general harmonic indeterminacy make the music float suspended as in a dream where memories, fragments of reality and fantastic images come and go. While we listen we seem to recognize The Eight Hours, Addio Lugano Bella, Il Canto Dei Battipali but they are transfigured and skeletal in a dust of sounds and melodic splinters. The general climate is one of astonished disorientation: man and his relationship with work in the times of liberal hegemony, precariousness and the loneliness of wage earners.” Flavio Massarutto, The Manifesto
“Improvisation – which remains the sum of music – comes from work songs and intentionally rotates around them. The results are nothing short of exciting: lively and pulsating music, which crosses a large part of the jazz tradition – the free, the New Thing, the Sixties-Seventies protest – but it does so in the name of free improvisation. Spectaculars all the protagonists. Very remarkable record, on the ridge between tradition and radical improvisation.” Neri Pollastri, All About Jazz
“From the Mahakaruna Quartet comes this substantive and thoroughly enjoyable set of jazz-based free improvisation. The group were recorded live at the Jazzmatec Festival in Udine in the covid-darkened days of September, 2020. The resulting music surely must count among the few positive things to emerge from that year. Over the course of the set, the quartet produces a cooperatively crafted improvisation notable for its vivid blending of color and intelligent use of variable dynamics. Pacorig’s Fender Rhodes and electronics play a particularly key but discreet role in weaving together the overall texture; Cancelli and Resnik demonstrate themselves to be first-rate collective players, and Giust once again plays with a sensitivity and musicality virtually unequaled among improvising drummers.” (on the second album) Daniel Barbieri, Avant Music News
“Listened to, this record could be defined as “free” free-jazz, where sax and trumpet alternate their interventions in a constant dialogue, exchanging ideas and inspirations. The drummer divides and shifts imaginary rhythms into bewildered rolls / beats and elastic pulsations in motion, while keyboardist Giorgio Pacorig (Rhodes + electronics) invokes / evokes the electric psyche of Miles and an enigmatic Sun Ra. This concert develops in a territory where the experimental joins the free jazz and the instigated disorder finds its point of gravity. The drummer creates a space for the insistent whirlwinds of the blowers and the refined and wild electrogenic drifts of the keyboard player, while he gives the deconstructive spin with this particular free, constantly and consciously unbalanced drumming. A beautiful outfit as often at Setola di Maiale (utopian work of the great Stefano Giust). Life practice!” (on the second album) Jean-Michel Van Schouwburg, Orynx Improv and Sounds
“Creating electro-acoustic interaction with vibrating space chords as prominent as acoustic techniques, artfully project the approach in live concert settings. A one-off meeting of improvisers who have distinguished themselves in other settings, Life Practice is an interaction among the voltages created by Italian Giorgio Pacorig’s electric piano and electronics plus acoustic stretches from fellow Italians Stefano Giust’s percussion and Gabriele Cancelli’s trumpet and Slovenian tenor saxophonist Cene Resnik. More acoustic by design, Life Practice‘s one extended improvisation moves through an idiosyncratic variant of introduction, elaboration and conclusion. Exposing unconventional dynamics, the ensemble confirms that tomorrow’s freedom and today’s life practice create engrossing programs that adroitly blend novel and expected textures.” (on the second album) Ken Waxman, Jazz Word
“The music presented here is very enjoyable with something for everyone: nice melodies, controlled cacophony, brooding atmospheres, spacious soundscapes, all presented with a drive and intent, willfulness if you will, to bring the expressive music across to the audience. Especially suited for people who like to dive into the world of free improvisation, to get a taste of what’s possible when nothing is written down, but the melody is still key, whatever key is used.” (on the second album) Vital Weekly
“Well calibrated free improvisation: three quarters of an hour of legible and never specious music.” (on the second album) Alberto Bazzurro, L’Isola Della Musica Italiana
“The Mahakaruna Quartet is a quartet of improvisers who effectively interpret a free jazz of which they boast a line of introversion: they propose a sort of hallucination jazz based on a trickle of that majestic directive that Miles Davis introduced in his In a Silent Way. In that famous work Davis did everything he could to distance himself from a label or genre, to propose a universal form of expression. Grasping the message of these times means supporting all those social activities that are the lightning rods of the denial of rights and the Mahakaruna did it through music and the liberation of dogmas. Intelligent music, free jazz flows in which the goal is the expansion of results, opening feasible minds with an action plan in which each of the musicians participates in an equivalent way, from fender rhodes playing a specific role to outline the scenarios, to the percussion which is a whirlwind; for trumpet and tenor sax the instinct is to move quickly with solos in sections that last intense in the space of a breath.” (on the second album) Ettore Garzia, Percorsi Musicali
“The narrative structure provides an appropriate framework for open structures. Gradually everyone has their turn and experimentation is the order of the day. A successful event.” (on the second album) Georges Tonla Briquet, Jazz’halo
“The performance at the Jazzmatec Festival gets longer and becomes a struggle, but not too much, between continuously fragmented rhythms and liquid notes of the keys. More than friction, sensitive approaches.” (on the second album) Marco Carcasi, Kathodik
“With great passion. Exactly. We like to be surprised. The serendipity of music. Again, after that Inventum CD of 2017 that burns inside of never dormant passions and (not illusions but) pebbles of intentions. Muscle the reed, invective the trumpet , the anarchic but organized drums, for the cause and politically lysergic the spirited keyboards. We envy the harmony, the commonality of shared memories. (8)” (on the second album) Dionisio Capuano, Blow Up
“The protagonists of Monday Night Raw are the courageous excursions into the maze of a limpid and poetic free jazz by the Mahakaruna Quartet. Thus, in a musical continuum where the most open poetics of the quartet already fascinates and conquers us, we can recognize splendid themes treated through dialogues that are very fresh, slow and exciting, ferocious and very fast, which once again confirm the great expressive freedom of the members, who look at a certain free jazz with twists to contemporary music, but always with an originality full of emotions and heart.” (on the Jazz Club Ferrara’s concert) Estense
“The quartet presented a rather complex concert. It was possible, in the sound, to understand the elements of a narration, characterized by a fluctuation between noise, colors and harmonic expansions, echoes full of old songs, blurred cities and romanticism. Meanwhile the whole included a series of subtlety, from the winds of Resnik and Cancelli or Pacorig on Rhodes. With all this, Giust was able to perceive the percussion, navigate in a wide variety of water and exhibit a fair mastery. It was an appearance for a patient and attentive ear. Mahakaruna doesn’t occupy the classic of free improvisation, which make effects only on the dark side of sound, noise, but also on a narration made of meta levels, where the combination creates a complex semantic mix. It was necessary to be extremely careful, follow every step of the Quartet and, at the same time, don’t lose the entirety – a sort of exercise of Gestalt reading images. We welcome you.” (on the Defonija Festival’s concert) Muanis Sinanović, Radio Študent
The group was set up by the pianist Giorgio Pacorig; the music moves into a free jazz of our days. “Maha karuna” means great compassion from Pali and Sanskrit, the old indian language. “Maha” is great or big and “karuna” is compassion for every living being, since we all suffer from many different causes in this world. Cene is Slovenian, lives in Ljubljana and is definitely one of the most interesting saxophonists of the Mitteleuropa. Their first album “Inventum” comes out on Nuovo Corso Records (April 2017), the second CD “Life Practice” for Setola di Maiale (March 2022).
Ombak Trio
Cene Resnik tenor and soprano saxophones
Giovanni Maier cello
Stefano Giust drums and percussion
“Giust is a refined, imaginative and original drummer improviser, and in this new trio he is accompanied by two other important exponents of European free music, the Slovenian saxophonist Cene Resnik and the double bass player (here dealing with the cello) Giovanni Maier. The music of the trio moves along typical trajectories of improvised music, with the musicians creating a dense dialogue that thickens the sound material until it explodes into powerful impulses, to then lower the temperature in wide meditative glimpses. Timbre and rhythmic exploration always remain in the foreground, and the long experience of the musicians involved keeps tension high. The end result sounds like a masterclass on historical improvised language, and at the same time a tangible demonstration of how this music can still reserve many surprises.” Nicola Negri, Centro d’Arte di Padova
“Through Eons To Now, one of the best albums of 2020.” Nazim Comunale, The New Noise
“This trio gives us no respite here. Resnik gives in to sharp explosions, Giust takes care of steady rolls and Maier provides an equally powerful atmosphere. It is also wonderful how the slightly melodic material is here put together in a compact, but also increasingly frenetic whole. The subcutaneous tension is clearly palpable, especially due to the patterns linked to the noise of Giust and Maier.” Ben Taffijn, Draai Om Je Oren + Nieuwe Noten
“Here there is the involvement of drummer Stefano Giust. He is based in Italy for a long time, working as a musician and also running the excellent Setola di Maiale-label. This collaboration was initiated by Ljubljana-based Resnik who did his studies at the Conservatory in Klagenfurt, Austria. He is an important musician from the Slovenian scene and a dedicated practitioner of Buddhist meditation as well. A practice that influences his musicianship. Maier from Trieste, Italy, started his career in the mid-80s, played with the Italian Instabile Orchestra, Marc Ribot, Chris Speed, etc. The Ombak Trio operates within a wide range of dynamics. Their timbres and sound are dry. But on the other hand, there is more tension and complexity in their improvisations, again with an attractive bass player in their midst and Giust proves again to be a very flexible drummer. The performance by Resnik is full of energy but at the same time very reflective and introverted. Very worthwhile.” Dolf Mulder, Vital Weekly
“The trio is a combination experienced in several sessions at Dobialab. Looking ontologically immersed in the trajectories of tension and relaxation typical of free improvisation, they see Giust sculpting timbres and rhythms like a shoemaker, Resnik working on development formulas that are rich in jazz syntax and Maier who acts as a harmonic detonator, with many cello maneuvers. It is music that has the effect of maturing transversal thoughts, something that is deeply interned in the soul of musicians, an almost noir skin, leading us to think that there is a Deleuzian logic inside. It is music valid for all times, because strong of a political thought that realizes that any change of the times, does not change our nature of men tending towards freedom and towards the improvement of the unstable, known and precarious condition of life.” Ettore Garzia, Percorsi Musicali
“A freely inspired trio (moreover through very palpable structures) is the one that signs Through Eons to Now, or rather the Ombak Trio, the sum of the Slovenian saxophonist Cene Resnik and the Friulian Giovanni Maier, cello, and Stefano Giust, drums. Six pieces, as we said formally more defined, with a happily calibrated group sound.” Alberto Bazzurro, L’Isola Della Musica Italiana
“This take on the saxophone-string-percussion form confirm its ongoing adaptability, especially when applied to Free Music. Profound heart-pounding intensity is displayed with color and sensitivity on these sessions. Each set has much to offer.” Ken Waxman, Jazz Word
“Six rather measured yet tense enough recordings by this trio. As with so much contemporary improv jazz, the trio clearly draw inspiration from outside sources, but it serves them well as they combine melody with deep tones in a setting that is open and allows almost every note to breathe. As always with such music, I’m sure this would be wonderful snatched live, too.” RJ, Progress Report
“From the beginning, deep and intense mutual listening is imposed on the listener. It is at the heart of their collective project: to play and build music so that each of the three musicians is simultaneously in the cockpit. As a listener, we focus on the shapes and sounds of this improvised music and on the individual originality of this or that musician. However, it is also a collective work in which the musicians improve each other in auditory and sensitive solidarity, avoiding making “solos” that can be equivalent to coming forward at the expense of others. This is one of the qualities of this Ombak trio. In this configuration of multiple dialogues, there is an ever-renewed balance that transits subtly as the subsequent sequences evolve. There are no two alike and everyone seems to follow their own path showing empathy with the other two. In short, these artists have the power to express many things with as much subtlety and energy as simplicity. They exploit their respective capacities with the imagination by assuming and sublimating the sum of their talents with fervor, empathy and this innate sense of collective improvisation that transports listeners to another world.” Jean-Michel Van Schouwburg, Orynx-improvandsounds
“Through Eons To Now is a trio session for tenor and soprano saxophone (Cene Resnik, from Ljubljana) and cello (Giovanni Maier of Trieste) as well as Giust’s drums. The music here is energetic and forward—still attentive to the formative role of space, but at the same time willing to fill that space with compacted sound.” Daniel Barbiero, Avant Music News
“It is with autumnal colors and tones that the Ombak Trio covers this Through Eons to Now, an interesting debut album. The music that the trio plays is pure and hard free jazz, freely improvised and with traces of literary rehearsals never completely defined, perhaps due to the fact that a large part of the sound investigation of this album is dedicated to transitory moments: if in a second we feel melancholy vibrations, later on we are struck by rebellious and energetic digressions that distance us from any contemplative state, inciting us to action and discovery. These alternations between different moods are further exacerbated by the touch of each of the elements: Resnik assumes himself as the melodic element of the group, with a warm and expressive sound, with a profoundly jazz vocabulary, but which also knows how to touch non-idiomatic grounds; Maier’s cello is cold, impersonal, sometimes played with the bow, sometimes with the fingers, often playing as a double bass; Giust’s percussion is curious for the restlessness it expresses, translated into an exhaustive search for the necessary accompaniment, being always present, but often assuming a secondary role, neglecting the protagonism and creating atmospheres and environments that allow his colleagues to paint on the landscape created. In this story of encounters and misalignments, Giust produces from metallic and penetrating sounds, punctual and spatial, to stormy ramblings of the dry drum elements, sporadically ‘humidified’ by certain blows on the rings of the drums. Giust’s role transcends that of pure maintenance of the rhythmic rigor of the trio. In fact, the moments in which the percussionist lets go from this metronomic “obligation” to become an active element of the dialogue, communicating through the timbre of each of the percussive elements of his kit are even more frequent. Through Eons to Now is a record that stands out for Resnik’s almost subversive stubbornness not to indulge in pure experimentation, a feature that gives this album a special touch, making it an excellent hybrid that explores both mapped landscapes and impracticable regions. Equally worthy of consideration are the services provided by Giust and Maier, much more exploratory and idiomatically detached, forming a large and well-made experimental texture. Transporting us from an immeasurable eternity to the present, here is a CD that falls like a glove in this autumn period.” João Morado, Beats for Peeps
“The international Ombak Trio with Resnik, Maier, Giust, has presented the culmination of the evening with their Slovenian debut. They played a subtle and clear music that really couldn’t be guided in uncertainty. Phrases and references, a space of sound trapped in a masterful elegance and is both an organism and an individual, and Maier at the forefront of such an environment acts as an incredibly discreet unit, around which all life can flow. ” (on the concert at Cerkno Festival 2020) Žiga Pucelj, SIGIC
“The vibrant music of the first night of the festival immediately reached my ears, but it was also quickly lost when the Ombak Trio appeared on stage, which was the least definable line-up of the evening, but perhaps also in exploration. Resnik on tenor and soprano saxophone, Maier on cello and Giust on drums, performed live for the first time, but they provided a fruitful and penetrating show, a version of which is found on their debut album Through Eons to Now, released this year.” (on the concert at Cerkno Festival 2020) Brigita Gračner and Marko Doles, Radio Študent
“This is the first performance of the Italian-Slovenian trio, in which the cellist Giovanni Maier and the drummer Stefano Giust play together with our saxophonist Cene Resnik. The sinuous melodies of the saxophonist, meditative and sometimes romantic, dressed the cellist and drummer of elusive rhythms and Resnik proved once again to be one of the best Slovenian jazz musicians, with his concentrated music, but at the same time lightened by conventions.” (on the concert at Cerkno Festival 2020) Mario Batelić, Primorskival
“The musicians presented sophisticated combination of occasionally atonal, even cacophonous and yet harmonious, but by no means oversaturated sound lines close to calmer free jazz.” (on the concert at Cerkno Festival 2020) Darinko Kores Jacks, Večer
Trio involved in free improvisation, a rich and distinctive timbre mixture, a deep and constantly moving music. They have two albums, the CD “Through Eons To Now” (Setola di Maiale, 2020) and the LP plus digital version “Look For The Difference (Live at 25th Jazz Cerkno Festival)” on Cerkno Jazz Records, 2021.
Klang!
Andrea Massaria electric guitar and electronics
Alessandro Seravalle laptop and electronics
Stefano Giust drums and percussion
The Klang! project started in duo with Massaria and Seravalle in the album entitled Klang! Catastrofe Elettrodebole Del Vuoto, published by Setola di Maiale. Subsequently they invited me to join the new trio on a permanent basis since the first concert at the Space Music Musica Concreta Festival, at the Sartorio Museum in Trieste (2024). The trio’s music is free improvisation.
Jars
Henry Marić bass clarinet, clarinet and prepared electric guitar
Boris Janje double bass
Stefano Giust drums and percussion
“We have here a refined, subtle and detailed meta-dialogue with the smallest sounds. The trio leaves the polarized attraction typical of free jazz with wind, bass and drums, to open up completely to sound fields and sound research. There is even a slight slow binary rhythm (excellent and authentic drummer). Henry Marić plays in a reserved, even hieratic way, with allusions and suggestions in the low register alternating harmonics, as if he were a painter. The double bass player plays in the center, leaving room for Stefano Giust’s multidirectional and very fine strokes. Having chosen the opposite path to expressionism and climates of tension and piles of energy, this trio opens the door to the expressiveness of the slightest movement, to the dynamics of contact with the fingertips, in slow motion, of a barely melodic motif mentioned, in a sort of unfinished dream whose development is suspended. In this very contained collective game, the clarinet excels in subtracting unnecessary notes to leave us some expressive and thoughtful signals, against which the drummer’s inventiveness works wonders: his style is incredible and his interventions are always appropriate even when he plays two little bells and a small cymbal, while the clarinet suggests the approach of a worried woodpecker and the double bass bow the branch on which the bird evolves… poetic music. We know that many fans love the energetic frenzy of the free trio, but we must also listen in the diametrically opposite direction and immerse ourselves in calm and fullness.” Jean-Michel Van Schouwburg, Orynx-improvandsounds
“In 50 minutes they give shape to 10 improvisations of a breakable and delicate nature. Space and colouring are important aspects of their music. Moving within a limited range of dynamics, they go into details, performing in a very relaxed and pleasant mode. There is a prominent role for the drummer who excels in inventive patterns with attractive playing by Janje on double bass. The job is finished by Marić who plays very to the point short motives on his clarinet in a modest and punctuated way. His performance has a strong presence. As a trio, they perform very concentrated and together, delivering a very warm and excellent set. A highlight for me this year so far.” Dolf Mulder, Vital Weekly
“In the Jars trio, the kinetic sense of free improvisation is touched by hand. It is an extraordinary psychological crossing of free improvisation. A way that reveals the sensory abilities of the musicians: Giust, with a set of drums and cymbals, builds incredibly truthful and fascinating backgrounds, thanks to a very fast movement management; Marić on clarinet (also bass) sets in motion an extemporaneous breath policy and uses preparations on an electric guitar; Janje alternately uses pizzicato or bow techniques to encourage the idea of handling; ultimately, there is a world of sounds and noises that is projected to special scenarios of the imagination, those that would please Lorenz or Pavlov or those who deal with neuroscience and filters applicable to the flow of thoughts. It means daydreaming with eyes open while you are in the garden on a summer day.” Ettore Garzia, Percorsi Musicali
“Jars makes the music subtle, Marić on the bass clarinet seems to be interested primarily in the essence of sound, through his elongated notes. He contrasts beautifully with the rhythmic play of Janje and Giust. Earthy and raw sounds are produced by the trio, in a special context. This is certainly the case with Stara Kuina, a piece that stands out above all for the beautiful sounds of the clarinet and for the way in which Giust uses his drum-kit. The wonderfully sober and delicate sound of Kinesko Ljeto forms the perfect ending to this beautiful album.” Ben Taffijn, Draai Om Je Oren + Nieuwe Noten
“On Jars, Giust is joined by Slovenian double bassist Boris Janje and Croatian clarinetist/bass clarinetist Henry Marić. Jars is an improvised session in which space plays a highly audible role. Giust provides a flexible framework of color and even moves into defined, yet elastic, rhythms on a couple of the tracks. Although containing mostly expressive, melodic music, the album does have moments of pure, unpitched timbre as Marić, a forcefully lyrical voice on reeds, when doubling on prepared electric guitar creates scraping, spiky sounds. Janje, who tends to favor staccato, economical bass lines, during the more abstract passages is able to open up his sound with extended pizzicato and arco techniques.” Daniel Barbiero, Avant Music News
“Trio with roots in Italy, Croatia and Slovenia, focusing on free improvised music and free jazz. The music on this debut album is difficult to define in terms of form, but perhaps easier to define in terms of content. The first often escapes us between the fingers of our hands, like water that we try to grasp for understanding. After all, we are dealing with a highly abstract matter. The trio is mainly dedicated to the creation of opaque landscapes and images, as well as the sound representation of thoughts and feelings. Marić is a deep clarinet player who often uses long notes which create a prolonged and contemplative atmosphere. Janje has an atomic phrasing, he prefers the staccato to the legato, he almost always plays the double bass with fingers, he uses the bow only for specific interventions. Giust is a very versatile and expressive percussionist, always present, and who has the extraordinary ability to be immensely communicative without, however, becoming intrusive. As Albert Einstein’s physics and Antonin Artaud’s writing served as inspiration for the beautiful album cover, we characterize this record as an anarchic method of sonic exploration… scientific or not, it’s very nice to listen to.” João Morado, Beats for Peeps
Free improvised music – an Italian Croatian Slovenian trio – with much poetry, unpredictability, details and timbres and despite being difficult music it is enjoyable to listen to. Available, on Setola di Maiale, the CD recorded on March 2019 in Pontiera (Istria, Croazia) and mixed by Nadan Rojnić.
Magimc
Edoardo Marraffa tenor and sopranino saxophones
Thollem McDonas piano
Stefano Giust drums and percussion
“Here, we have the wonderful improvising pianist Thollem McDonas, accompanied by Edoardo Marraffa and Stefano Giust – two of Italy’s finest young improvising musicians -. Marraffa is an exceptionally gifted player. Giust is no slouch either. Endlessly resourceful, he uses every surface of his conventional drum kit to generate sounds that are somehow unexpected while being completely in concert with the prevailing mood of the moment. The amazing thing is that Magimc is the sense of connection between these disparate musicians that is deep and palpable. It’s something that can take years to develop, but in this case it’s seemingly developed instantly.” Dave Wayne, All About Jazz USA
“There’s so much happening that it’s pointless to try keep track of it. Free, direct, explosive and adventurous. Thollem McDonas, Stefano Giust and Edoardo Marraffa create some real sparks here, with tones and sounds flying free and wild, there are moments they seem to be everywhere. Most definitely recommended.” (Free) Jazz Alchemist
“Outstanding performers, high concentration, remarkable interplay! Awesome trio.” Downtown Music Gallery
“Each musician has a strong personality, and the contrast of styles and instrumental voices constitute one of the most interesting aspects of this album, a sonic snapshot of both a working group and a spontaneous musical meeting, showing all the subtleties, difficulties and brilliant solutions to that most difficult task — listening and talking to each other, in spite of the differences.” (on the second album) Nicola Negri, Free Jazz Blog
“Perfect example of contemporary free improvisation from three musicians with full control of their instruments. An iconoclastic music with a starting point.” Jazz&Tzaz
“Magimc build and deconstruct the balance on the tightrope. Spontaneity doesn’t exclude reflection and it’s this paradoxical approach that excites senses. Having carved in stone, they rub the facets… Astonishing!!” (on the first album) Jean-Michel Van Schouwburg, Improjazz/Orynx-improvandsounds
“The life of this powerful and intense trio continues its course: energy requirements, powerful expression. Often superhuman energy, radical free jazz, sometimes “demolition” of the piano, abandonment of the compositions or themes for a total improvisation. It’s a trio that persists and marks. An exceptional pianist, a tenor saxophonist with a true singularity, a powerful drummer with original ideas, cohesion and sense of improvisation. Their music has gained a wider range compared to their excellent album on Amirani and bluntly convinces. This combination of instruments enables muscle exchanges and variety and impresses the audience when musicians have energy to spare and the talent of these three individualities. It feels reborn through a willingness to improvise, escaping the routine, changing trajectories, alternating the power of spontaneous expression and the reflection on the moment while playing, telling real stories… There are passages in which the listening is deep and palpable … It’s a kind of experience, a real adventure.” (on the second album) Jean-Michel Van Schouwburg, Improjazz/Orynx-improvandsounds
“A remarkable agreement between three musicians at unison, engaged in a meaningful context that eschew clichés and conventions, constantly looking for extreme solutions to generate the hypnotic flow of notes and energy that emanate from their instruments. A complex work, a maze of suggestions that attracts to its center and then refer to the margins, without ever revealing the exit.” Blow Up
“An unconventional if accepted configuration at least since the Swing Era and most dazzlingly used by Cecil Taylor in the 1960s, the saxophone-piano-drums trio provides the proper balance of melody, rhythm and enrichment for a fulfilling recital. Magimc’s CD offers high-quality variations on the saxophone-piano-drums methodology.” Ken Waxman, Jazz Word
“An exceptional trio.” Sounds Behind The Corner
“The panorama of improvised music in Europe is always very lively and in our own country we have many excellent improvisers. In Emilia, drummer Stefano Giust has encamped his label Setola di Maiale, today an indispensable reference point of the free music, for our nation and beyond. In “Area Sismica” we find him exchanging sparks sounds with the reeds of Marraffa and the piano of Thollem. Six tracks of ferocity, really. The CD is entirely improvised but everyone can enjoy, though it’s a distressed form, uncanny, sleepless energy. Listen with open ears.” Flavio Massarutto, Alias/Il Manifesto
“The second recording of the trio confirms the trembling that affects the listener in front of a set like this; it makes visible the creative potential that is inherent in the dna of the best musicians. Again, a set of highest level.” (on the second album) Ettore Garzia, Percorsi Musicali
“When two well-known personalities in the world of free and experimental Italian music as Edoardo Marraffa and Stefano Giust met another improviser, an American as Thollem McDonas, it happens that sound is fragmented into many small parts that show chaos as a very precise sound dimension.” Gianmaria Aprile, Sodapop
“A freely improvised live set, very lively, powerful, with quick interactions, and sustained creativity.” François Couture, Monsieur Delire
“MaGiMc sees Marraffa – whose approach condenses stimuli taken from Ayler and Sanders as from Brötzmann and Evan Parker – and Giust – with a jagged drumming reminiscent both Sunny Murray and Milford Graves as well as Paul Lytton and Tony Oxley – join the American pianist Thollem McDonas. The latter plays the role of the balance between the tensions created by colleagues, mainly thanks to the experiences in the avant-garde jazz (with William Parker, Vinny Golia and Nels Cline) as well as in the academic, for example with Pauline Oliveros and Stefano Scodanibbio.” Boddi, Musica Jazz
“Well-known musicians, Marraffa with his macerated notes and painful, and the pianist with the precise accents, while drummer introduces elements of surprise with its unlikely rhythms, music is enriched with unpredictability. The Italian avant-garde has found a surprising trio.” Vittorio Lo Conte, Music Zoom
The background of Magimc, an Italian-American trio, is rich and varied, yet it is difficult to define their music as eclectic, because the factors that come into play in the relationship of composition, the different materials that make up the music, is developed in depth and time, in an original language. Change and transformation are under investigation, in this group: the harmonic relations, the melodic and rhythmic counterpoint always goes in different paths, sometimes evolving slowly, at times subjected to sudden acceleration, while maintaining a certain independence and complexity that allows a multi-dimensional musical journey, the trio of musicians prefer a unity of purpose and cohesion that leads them to an intense and expressive communication. Their first album Polishing the Mirror is published on Amirani Records in 2012, the second is a concert recorded at Area Sismica (Forlì) with the same title, on Setola di Maiale (2015). In 2019 they met again for two concerts in Milan and Bologna.
Camusi
Patrizia Oliva vocals and electronics
Stefano Giust drums and percussion
“Camusi’s work is an infinite beauty. They may have created a gap between the time and then. Exciting. Camusi possesses a precious gift: the vision.” Sands-zine
“Italian duo Camusi totally burnt the house down and melt the faces and minds of all present at their concert as part of the Hanoi New Music Festival 2013.” Hung Tran, The Onion Cellar
“This duo is the most exciting surprise of 2007. Oliva is in continuous countermelody while Giust’s rhythmic carpet is extraordinary. A thin thread of madness, a music that envelops distant worlds, a modern siren that charms the unsuspecting sailors.” Stefano Pifferi, SentireAscoltare
“The live show is brilliant: the fragmented rhythms of Giust change with the naturalness of a beating wings, it’s free jazz, it’s radical improv, it’s even trip-hop, each piece bears his indelible imprint. No less important is the Madame par excellence, her voice exudes passion and vehemence at every step, it’s a scratch, a caress, a slap and a scream at the same time. All this drags the sound of Camusi into the abyss of the soul, and then up to the sky. A form of improvisation that can appear as a miracle, nothing here is botched or happened by chance. Don’t miss them if sighted in concert.” Succo Acido
“Camusi is an experimental idea of great value.” Ettore Garzia, Percorsi Musicali
“A project among the most challenging of that epiphany of living creature that is Stefano Giust, Camusi is a duo of atypically jazz improvisation. Their music comes from research on noise electronics and voice by Patrizia Oliva and the huge percussion of Giust. The voice is refracted, is eating itself alive. The ability to adapt to an increasingly diverse environment of Giust, shows a completeness, now almost perfect, in being able to draw personal soundscapes. From the depths of the two protagonists, climb back memories of an ancestral beauty, manifested in the ever-changing musical forms.” SentireAscoltare
“One of the most interesting Roman festivals reopens under the sign of genius. That is drummer Stefano Giust, incredibly talented percussionist with a damn negroid groove. Paired with Patrizia Oliva he forms Camusi: a duo with a devastating shot, something that smells like new thing, but wet in the murky waters of European free improvisation. Extended techniques and effects with rigor, they bend all the time and at the verge of break, it hits you in the face. No chance. It’s a triumph of muscles and uvula, an esoteric ping pong, a test of strength, a gym for the mind. The ductility of the duo is a discourse of telepathy, of readiness to carry stimuli from the brain to the arts. A performance of great magnetism and impact.” Luca Collepiccolo, Blow Up
Camusi is based on free improvisation: the esthetic approach of the two musicians interact with each other touching different areas, such as contemporary music, avant-garde jazz, electro-acoustic and other. Voice, electronics and drums have the same role and dialogue following a sort of instrumental democracy. In their duets, at the same time, they develop different architectural layers and perspectives. Camusi has produced one album published by Setola di Maiale in 2007, which received great critical acclaim. However, the duo has decided to not produce albums in addition, thinking to Camusi as a project totally identified with the performative act of the concert and no longer with recording stuff. Camusi has played in Italy, United Kingdom, The Netherlands, France, Spain, Portugal, Belgium, Austria, Croatia and Vietnam.
Haiku
Paolo Pascolo flute, bass flute, tenor sax and electronics
Stefano Giust drums and percussion
“Haiku is a deceptively simple art form. Consisting of a handful of syllables, three lines and plainly direct language, these poems when successful imply an entire macrocosm in the microcosmic observation of detail. By the same token the improvising duo Haiku—Stefano Giust and Paolo Pascolo—take the smallest ensemble format and leverage it to improvise a rich world of sound color, texture, and line. Giust is credited with drums and cymbals, but in practice he is a multi-instrumentalist in the way he approaches the various components of his set. Each individual drum is treated as a distinct instrument in its own right, with its own unique voice to be sounded alone or in chorus with the other voices. Giust plays for timbre and space rather than for pulse and leaves a good deal of open room for each element of his to resound to its fullest. The recording puts the listener right in the middle of these sounds where he or she can actually feel the vibrations—especially of the bass drum. Pascolo complements Giust’s sound with flute, bass flute, tenor saxophone and electronics. Whether on flute or saxophone Pascolo plays with a liquid fluency. His lines cohere around thematic runs—downward cascades of notes shifted over different implicit keys, elongated tones slowly floating upward—that aggregate over the course of an improvisation into songlike arcs. On bass flute Pascolo unfolds a line with the gravitas appropriate to the instrument; his two contributions on electronics serve as abstract interludes in between acoustic flights.” Daniel Barbiero, Avant Music News
“Pascolo is also appreciable here on the tenor sax, as well as on the flutes (his primary instruments), while Giust is tireless chiseller of percussive polyphonies, which at times are capable of developing fantastic similarities (at a certain point you listen to a sort of mechanic that seems to refer to the repairs of a shoe shop). There is an incredible malleability in this music, a quality that the two musicians manage to communicate by listening thanks to the providence of free improvisation, based on agility, vaulting, on the surprise of the moment.” Ettore Garzia, Percorsi Musicali
“This is a duo-work by the two experienced Italian improvisers. In their duo collaboration, Giust and Pascolo also almost sound like a complete ensemble. Their rich vocabulary and technique make that their playful dialogues are full of details concerning dynamic, colour and timbre. And throughout, this CD is an excellent opportunity to enjoy Giust’s playing style. He plays in a very natural and organic way, using many percussive objects in all possible ways. Pascolo plays similarly, that is to say, in flowing movements and gestures. This makes their sensible textures very coherent. Hope to hear more of it one day.” Dolf Mulder, Vital Weekly
Haiku is an electroacoustic duo focused on free improvised music and free jazz, that takes its name from the beloved dog of Paolo Pascolo, a name that just partially characterizes the music of the duo. Their music is well suited as soundtrack for films and especially action painting, as already happen with the artist Arianna Ellero, for the project Pieno e Vuoto (Voll und Leer). Their CD was released on Setola di Maiale on December 31th, 2019.
Neu Musik Projekt
Guido Mazzon trumpet, fluegelhorn, piano, synthesizer, harmonica, toys, chimes, crackle box and voice
Marta Sacchi Bb clarinet, A clarinet, melodica, chimes, voice, alto baroque flute, toys, piano, laptop and hand bells
Stefano Giust drums and percussion
“At TAI fest [Milan 2016], another nice trio: the Neu Musik Projekt with the authoritative Guido Mazzon, the versatile Marta Sacchi and the sparkling Stefano Giust whose drumming will remain as one of the remarkable things of creative music of these years.” Michele Coralli
“Mazzon on trumpet has a confident voice and an agile phrasing, searching for new sounds and moods with an expert use of mutes. Sacchi’s clarinet perfectly complements him with a beautifully controlled tone and elegant melodic inventions, while Giust is constantly experimenting with new sounds, suggesting rhythm more than stating it, or negating it altogether. The album explores different musical styles and brilliantly blends them into a cohesive whole, from the peculiar mix of contemporary composition, spoken word interludes and melodic inventions. The range of styles and moods explored in this record is surprising, going well beyond the jazz or improv labels, revealing a complex, sometimes puzzling but always fascinating musical world, explored with humor and passion.” Nicola Negri, Free Jazz Blog
“Here is an important CD that marks the return to the disc of trumpeter Guido Mazzon, historic leader of the musical innovators who has lost none of its enamel, rather he has added a lot. The companions are Marta Sacchi and Stefano Giust. The consent of educated listeners will not fail.” Franco Fayenz
“Neu Musik Projekt relates the attempt to reach a metaphysical dimension, through a chiming sound within emulations, a preparatory action to the understanding of “other ways” of listening: the matter of the hearing, the complexity of silence, the “relationship” between improvisers, the visual grandeur of the score are all elements that hold hostage a thick amount of relationships, with resonance, free jazz, melodic sophistication, the literary reading, the abstruse technique.” Ettore Garzia, Percorsi Musicali
Formed in 2015, this project is focused on some aspects of contemporary music and free improvisation, with words and written music scores by Guido Mazzon, historical exponent of the first Italian avant-garde, founder of the Gruppo Contemporaneo (1969) and Italian Instabile Orchestra. He has played among others with the gotha of the avant-garde jazz as Anthony Braxton, Cecil Taylor, Andrew Cyrille, Lester Bowie, Andrea Centazzo and Alexander von Schlippenbach’s Globe Unity. Marta Sacchi is first clarinet at the G. Nicolini Conservatorio Orchestra (2003-2005), first clarinet at the Soncino Orchestra (2000-2003) and first clarinet at the Orchestra Camerata de Bardi (2002-2003). She has also a master in chamber music and in music composition as well as a degree in music therapy. She lives in Pavia and London. In December 2015 they have published a studio recordings album on Setola di Maiale.
Ipersensity
Daniele Pagliero sampler, machines and electronics
Stefano Giust electronic percussion pads
“Radical electronic, cold and dyslexic, obsessive, a sputter of signals and evolving fragments. The game tends to avoid easy fascinations. A digitally slipping, inexorably, towards the primitive human abyss. Autism and twisted on itself, yet lively and stimulating. A sound that demonstrates a past and leaves a mark at the instant of the present. Then it becomes foreboding future.” Marco Carcasi, Sands-zine
“Mind blowing, Ipersensity live set by my mate Daniele Pagliero and Stefano Giust last night (April 7th, 2019) at Sublime Grove #8, Unione Culturale Franco Antonicelli in Turin: conceptually, musically and visually stunning. I was truly impressed. Kudos to them.” Fabrizio Modonese Palumbo
Ipersensity is a duo which plays electronic improvised music, greatly influenced by minimal techno aesthetics and aleatory music, since 2001. The work on their albums and performances is organized as follows: Daniele sends sounds — via midi connection — to eight or more electronic pads, which are played in real-time by me, with drum sticks (or also with pedals). In this way, the choices of each musician is directly reflected on the other musician’s work. Neither know where the music will go, because it goes its own way, regardless of the performers possible intentions. In practice, the sound produced by each pad (its heights, its timbre, its volume and its attack) could change in any moment, offering a shifting base for an improvised percussive work. Sound development and rhythmic movement, two elements usually taken care of by a single musician, are the inextricable result of the two musicians. Daniele is therefore responsible for the sound choice, while my role is to play and compose the music in real time, based on constantly changing material. There are two studio albums, both on Setola di Maiale and the third will be out during 2019.
TAI No-Orchestra
Roberto Masotti visual, live video and improWYSIWYG
Gianluca Lo Presti visual, live video and improWYSIWYG
Pat Moonchy voice, persephone, zengarten, taimachine, waterphone and mobius
Patrizia Oliva voice, electronics, objects, tapes
Giancarlo Locatelli Bb clarinet, bass clarinet, alto clarinet, bells and objects
Mario Arcari oboe, soprano sax, clarinet and shanaij
Massimo Falascone alto, baritone and sopranino saxophones, crackle box, tugombuto, iPad and live electronics
Claudio Lugo curved soprano sax, prepared alto sax and objects
Riccardo Luppi flute, soprano and tenor saxophones
Edoardo Ricci alto, soprano and sopranino saxophones, bass clarinet, circuit bending, objects and live electronics
Stefano Bartolini tenor and baritone saxophones, objects and live electronics
Roberto Gatti aka Robin Neko crackle box and texts
Guido Mazzon trumpet, cornet and pocket trumpet
Luca Calabrese trumpet and live electronics
Alberto Mandarini trumpet and flugelhorn
Matteo Pennese cornet, pocket trumpet and live electronics
Martin Mayes french horn, alphorn and conch
Angelo Contini trombone, didgeridoo and objects
Alberto Braida piano
Alberto Tacchini piano and live electronics
Claudio Lodati guitar and live electronics
Alessandra Novaga guitars and objects
Eugenio Sanna amplified guitar and objects
Paolo Botti viola, stroh violin, banjo, bowed psaltery, er-hu, cornet and dobro
Walter Prati cello
Roberto Del Piano electric bass guitar
Silvia Bolognesi double bass
Filippo Monico drums and percussion
Stefano Giust drums and percussion
special guests:
Alessandro Bosetti voice and electronics
Carlo Prevosti documentary filmmaker (Insolito Cinema)
Fabio Volpi visual, live video / AU+ and synthesizer
Rosarita Crisafi visual, live video / AU+ and saxophones
Antonello Cassinotti voice
Fabio Mina flutes
Eloisa Manera violin
Roberto Zorzi electric guitar
Annalisa Pascai Saiu voice and objects
Michele Anelli double bass and electric bass guitar
Andrea Grossi double bass
Bob Marsh violin, cello, voice, electronics and sonic suits
Matthias Boss violin
Pasquale ‘Lino’ Liguori drums
Marcello Magliocchi drums and percussion
Ferdinando Faraò drums and percussions
Cristiano Calcagnile drums and percussions
Andrea Centazzo drums and percussion
“Fantastic final evening of the extraordinary improv festival called TAI Fest # 2. It begins with the trio of bassist Roberto Del Piano with guitarist Claudio Lodati and hornist Martin Mayes. A hole of sounds invigorated by the effects of Lodati, the acrobatic adventures of Roberto and the harmonic games of Mayes. After a short break it’s the turn of a quartet led by the excellent drummer Stefano Giust, one of the best around, with the great trombonist Angelo Contini, the young double bass player Andrea Grossi and the great Mario Arcari on sax and oboe: it seems a weird magical music ball that bounces between these four extraordinary improvisers, with lame rhythms, advanced trombone’s sounds, precise solos on double bass with bow and some sort of classical melodies from oboe. After a quick stage change, duo Patrizia Oliva (voice and electronics) and Alessandra Novaga (prepared guitar) is ready for a mystical and cathartic moment of great suggestion. The final is creepy: the saxophones of Massimo Falascone and the voice of Pat Moonchy start a mantra with no time limits nor space, accompanied by videos of the collective AU and improWYSIWIG, conducted by Gianluca Lo Presti and historic photographer of ECM, Roberto Masotti. When the music dies, after a short bis, the audience burst into a thunderous applause and I realize that the entire room is paralyzed by so much magic and so much charm…” Fabrizio Testa, Blow Up
Terra Australis Incognita. The orchestra is founded on an idea by Roberto Masotti, Massimo Falascone and Roberto Del Piano. Not really an orchestra, but an aggregate of musicians available under this brand for concerts and festivals, in various combinations from time to time and which also finds its strength in the diversity of this extraordinary crossroads of people and talents. TAI is multiplicity of thought and poetry, dispersion of visuality, creativity and commitment, with a strong visual work, via projections, lights and moves. The music is mainly on the ground of improvisation, although the writing may be part of the path.
A solo play
Stefano Giust drums, cymbals, percussion
“Auspiciously, Giust demonstrates that a stimulating drum feature can exist within the parameters of wholly improvised music. Combining single rim pings, drum top reverb and ratcheting cymbal strokes, the clatters and pops could burnish any contemporary jazz session.” Ken Waxman, Jazz Word, Music Works
“Giust is in practice a multi-instrumentalist in the way he approaches the various components of his set. Each individual drum is treated as a distinct instrument in its own right, with its own unique voice to be sounded alone or in chorus with the other voices. Giust plays for timbre and space rather than for pulse and leaves a good deal of open room for each element of his to resound to its fullest.” Daniel Barbiero, Avant Music News
Solo performance is a very interesting musical practice for a musician, in particular for an improviser. There aren’t plurality and ‘friction’ of the ensemble and it can be a strong sonic and visual experience for the spectator. My first interest towards this practice, was began around the early 90s and in ’94, a double album of mine has an exhaustive title: “Ripercuotere”. Later, for many years, my involvement on solo performance has proved secondary to my interest in ensemble music, from duo upward, nevertheless I never stopped to play solo live. As Derek Bailey said, there aren’t surprises and alchemies in solo improvisation as it happens between multiple players, it is true, because to emerge is the mere personal musical aesthetics, without interference and additions, the resulting music has a higher degree of control. In the solo performance of a drummer improviser, fundamental are the experiences in the field of percussion music in the Western classical music of the 20th century – on all Varèse, Scelsi, Stockhausen, Xenakis, Cage, Feldman and Bartók (they are all musicians who have freed percussion from submission to other instruments; think of Bartók’s Sonata for two pianos and percussions from 1942, where it is written in the score that the two pianists and the two percussionists who will perform the piece are to be understood on the same level: this was really an important innovation in classical music). Equally fundamental are the experiences in the more adventurous jazz, with drummers like, in no particular order, Sunny Murray, Andrew Cyrille, Ed Blackwell, Charles Moffett, Barry Altschul, Jerome Cooper, Milford Graves, Steve McCall, Max Roach, Jo Jones, Rashied Ali, J.C. Moses, Dennis Charles, Elvin Jones, Dannie Richmond, Tony Williams, Oliver Johnson, Marco Cristofolini, Tony Rusconi, Toshi Tsuchitori, Shoji Hano and, more experimental, Paul Lovens, Roger Turner, David Moss, Han Bennink, Paul Lytton, Max Neuhaus, Vladimir Tarasov, Tony Oxley, Sven-Åke Johansson, Günter Sommer, Eddie Prévost, John Stevens, Fritz Hauser, Pierre Favre, Sabu Toyozumi, Gerry Hemingway, Andrea Centazzo, Marcello Magliocchi, Filippo Monico. Several of these musicians were the first, for biodata reasons, to have internalized, personalized and even expanded, the radical exploration of percussion, already pursued in many of the twentieth century scores (the first piece for solo percussion is “Ionisation” by Edgard Varèse, written between 1929 and 1931). The research of the composers gradually becomes more and more complex, even divergent and it obviously concerns all aspects: timbre, rhythmic possibilities, gestures and the development of extended techniques. The drum kit can be musically expanded, it can be prepared (extemporaneously or even permanent), as well as John Cage has taught us with his prepared piano, an idea obviously adaptable to any musical instrument. The drums change their characteristics when cymbals or objects are on the skin and not less, the sound of these cymbals becames different, for the fact that they are leaning against the drum. The first composer who has written on the score to strike a cymbal leaning against a drum was Giacinto Scelsi, who has greatly expanded the playing techniques and the timbre combinations of percussions and cymbals; also Karlheinz Stockhausen in particular for “Mikrophonie 1″, where a large tamtam is urged with a great variety of implements of glass, cardboard, metal, wood, rubber and plastic, plus two microphones. The composers – and here we must add Thelonious Monk, Charles Mingus, Ornette Coleman, Cecil Taylor and Anthony Braxton – have opened new ways, new conceptions of what can be done with the percussion and rhythm, and these ideas have positively enriched the contemporary drumming which is expressed, in my context, with the practice of improvisation. The instrument has been freed from being an accompanying instrument, relegated to pure rhythmic section. Time has been freed and as Paul Bley said, as well as the heart rate is not constant, even in the music, time must be able to do the same, free to follow the flow wherever it goes and free to express it; Cecil Taylor insisted: “the idea of drums-metronome is dead and buried.” The drum kit – with its drums and cymbals and the personal selection of sticks and mallets, small metal instruments and other percussive objects, that make a sort of prepared drum kit – is first a source of sound, vibration, it is itself an orchestra; timbres and intensities are combined together and they produce noises, rhythms, polyrhythms, sounds, with different dynamics, volumes and masses: the musician’s responsibility lies in being able to manage all this and with these materials telling a coherent musical story. There is an interesting thought and feeling, that is to consider the drum kit as a whole, not as a percussion instrument, but as another instrument, in a similar way to what Glenn Gould said referring to the piano: he thought of his instrument as a string quartet or an organ or a harpsichord and you can easily guess why. After all, he claimed that the instrument is not played with the fingers, but with the brain. In the end, the most important thing for a musician is the inner ear. It is all these considerations that create the coordinates towards which I am projected and in which I move. I also want to add that every influence enriches us as an experience, which is why even youthful musical tastes are essential to outline paths of (self) learning and (self) musical education. In my case, when I was a child around twelve, I was impressed by John Bonham and Ian Paice, Kraftwerk’s drum machines, then some drummers of post punk, hard-core, and then Chris Cutler, Charles Hayward, Giulio Capiozzo of the group Area, the rhythms of Autechre, Aphex Twin, etc. Other interesting worlds are certainly the non-Western music, although here I cannot define myself as very expert: I really like the Apala music of Nigeria, the Gamelan of Indonesia, the Vietnamese Ca Tru, the Gondang Sabangunan of North Sumatra, the music of India from north to south (how not to mention Zakir Hussain). Percussion music seems to be an infinite matter, and really it is, it belongs and accompanies our long history of human beings, it moves something inside us, while skins and metallophones vibrate, we are vibrating with them. It’s physics and metaphysics. At last, music depends on the circumstances of life in that moment, on the acoustics of the place, on the energies that are there, and it fits because the dynamic can be very very loud (fffff) or very very soft (ppppp) and move through the shades of intensity. It is the path, the search, the feeling and the instinct to move the heart of every sound.
Recent collaborations
ImprovvisoFantasia
“Grandi Numeri” by Sylvano Bussotti
(world premiere in concert)
Giuseppe Giuliano piano
Giancarlo Schiaffini trombone
Manuela Galizia voice
Corrado Rojac accordion
Johnny Lapio trumpet
Gabriel Bechini clarinet and bass clarinet
Federico Scalas electric guitar
Stefano Giust drums and percussion
ImprovvisoFantasia is an ensemble founded and led by the pianist and composer Giuseppe Giuliano and focuses on the interpretation of the most creative pages of avant-garde and contemporary classical music, such as compositions by John Cage, Cornelius Cardew, Claudio Ambrosini or Sylvano Bussotti: scores in the which requires the active participation of the soloist and who is left with wide interpretative freedom. The ensemble performs, albeit with different lineups, two world premieres of Bussotti’s “Grandi Numeri”: the first studio recording for an album and the first concert performance. The lineup is open and variable and includes great soloists, such as Rohan De Saram (for thirty years cellist of the historic Arditti Quartet, a true emblem of contemporary classical music and instrumental virtuosity).
On November 18, 2023 I was part of the ensemble in the lineup reported above, performing in concert as a world premiere “Grandi Numeri” by Sylvano Bussotti, among his latest works, from 2010, which also includes the drum kit, as part of Musica Fragile (Nella Fugacità del Gesto Musicale) of the 37th edition of the Trieste Prima festival – Incontri Internazionali con la Musica Contemporanea, at the Auditorium of the Revoltella Museum in Trieste.
Giuseppe Giuliano was born in Rome, at time he works worldwide as composer, pianist, improviser and sound projectionist. Compositions by Giuseppe have been premiered in remarkable places, such as entre Georges Pompidou, Ircam, Internationale Ferienkurse Darmstadt, Teatro alla Scala Milano, Teatro La Fenice Venezia, Autumn Festival Moscow Rachmaninoff Hall, Akiyoshidai Festival Japan, Berkeley University San Francisco, Biennale di Venezia, Melbourne University, Elektron Festival Stockholm, etc. As pianist Giuseppe plays the contemporary repertoire as well improvised free jazz. As sound projectionist he has performed pivotal works by Karlheinz Stockhausen, Luigi Nono e Iannis Xenakis. Among his teaching highlights: Juilliard School New York, Internationale Ferienkurse Darmstadt, Universität der Künste Berlin, UDK Wien, Guildhall School of Music and Drama London, P. I. Ciajkovskij Conservatory Moscow, Irino Foundation Tokyo, Conservatorio Superior de Madrid, etc. Extremely important for his musical background have been the close contacts with Franco Evangelisti, Luigi Nono, Karlheinz Stockhausen and John Cage.
Pieno e Vuoto (Voll und Leer)
Arianna Ellero action painting
Paolo Pascolo flute, bass flute, tenor sax and electronics
Stefano Giust drums and percussion
The use of natural pigments and raw colors is combined with a musical research process that includes the natural sound of wind instruments, percussion and electronics. On this occasion, focus of the work is the transition from ancient elements such as pure color, the breath of the reeds and the sound of skins and cymbals, for a transformation and actualization of the material during real time performance. The proposal is a live performance in which the corresponding expressive languages – music and action painting – are brought together in a creative fusion between the arts, without due form and without constraint of reason. As John Cage recalled, the various expressive forms of each art have their own life, not seen as reciprocal subordination but rather as independent manifestations which, thanks to aleatory processes, can be related to each other directly by the public in a stimulating and creative communion.
Spiritual Unity
Fred Casadei double bass
Marco Colonna bass clarinet
Stefano Giust drums and percussion
“As the title suggests [Spiritual Unity], the essence of intimate communion is not declared as only expressive, but as artistic sensitivity among those who participate. The individuality is transformed into collectivity, in sharp contrast with the egocentrism and the protagonism that dominate in many works today. The recording confirms an immediate agreement, the improvisation unfolds in a fluid and evocative interplay.” Monica Carretta, Musica Jazz
This is an open project led by Fred Casadei, active since 2016. We did the first tour as a trio with Riccardo Marogna (bass clarinet, tenor sax) and as a quartet with Paolo Pascolo (flute, alto sax) and Gabriele Cancelli (trumpet). The second tour involved Marco Colonna, again as a trio. Furthermore, there are other musicians that Fred involves, mainly in the Roman area. The ensemble plays original compositions that have ample possibilities for collective and soloist improvisation. In 2017 there are three coordinated albums, published on Setola di Maiale, with the same compositions played with three different ensembles: Love (trio with Marco Colonna and me), Sky (duo with Francesco Manfrè on cello) and Sun (duo with Luca Venitucci on accordeon). The concert of the trio with Colonna and me, recorded in January 2018 at Area Sismica (Forlì), was broadcast in full by Rai Radio Tre / Radio3 Suite.
Noma
Alessandra Laganà voice
Tommaso Marletta electric guitar and synth
Dominik Gawara electric bass guitar
Gianni Gebbia soprano sax
Kei Yoshida trumpet
Fabrizio Modonese Palumbo electric guitar and viola
Paul Beauchamp musical saw
Patrizia Oliva vocals, electronics and chinese flute
Igor Jovanovic synthchoir
Boris Blace trombone
Gabrio Bevilacqua double bass
Stefano Giorgi visual art
Andrés Arce Maldonado film director
Stefano Giust drums and percussion
Noma is a project led by Alessandra Laganà and Tommaso Marletta. It borns from a biographical story of Alessandra and tells of her battle against cancer, aided by art and music. That has produced a CD, a forthcoming book and an autobiographical documentary film, directed by Andrés Arce Maldonado. The movie is the winner of the recognition award for the humanitarian value of the work at the Accolade Global Film Competition 2017 (California, USA). The music of the album are songs born, musically, from experimental processes, characterised by the singing of Alessandra.
blucinQue Company ‘Il Volo/La Vertigine di Giulietta’
Caterina Mochi Sismondi direction, choreography
Francesca Netto, Caterina Mochi Sismondi dramaturgical adaptation
Jonnathan Angel Rodriguez, Elisa Mutto, Rio Ballerani, Andrea Paola Martínez, Lukas Vaca Medina, Federico Ceragioli, Camilo Jimenez acrobats, dancers
Francesca Netto, Marta Rizzi actors
Patrizia Oliva, Stefano Giust music
Max Vesco lights – with the supervision of Lucio Diana
Monica Oliviero audio
blucinQue / Fondazione Cirko Vertigo production
“Vertigine di Giulietta, the performance between theater and circus is a success. Open scene applause for the blucinQue company at the Teatro Comunale in Adria. For many a discovery, an impact with something new. Maybe it took a few moments to get into an unusual atmosphere, both bodily and ethereal, physical and dreamlike, but then the applause began in open scene (as the Italians say), underlining the final applause of a successful show.” Cristiano Draghi, Rovigo in Diretta
Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet is the occasion in this show to investigate the relationship and the loss of senses, bringing the work into a dream dimension. Vertigine is understood here as a loving one: through the circus techniques, and with continuous research on the issues of the dispersion, the disequilibrium and also of conflict and attraction, the setting is based on original dramaturgy. In March 2016, this study was restart – a work already undertaken by the company with La Vertigine di Giulietta/Il Balcone for the In Situ’s network in 2014 – renewing the attention on musical elements in relation to the body and the circus tools: the sound remains an integral part of the research work, also featuring the latest creations of the company, such as VertigoSuite# (NeXt 2015 prize, debut at the Piccolo Teatro di Milano) and We273 (work dedicated to John Cage – for which I did as a tutor about Cage’s life and work for the company, at Cascade in Bourg St Andéol, France – selected for the AvignonOff Festival and which debuted at Civitanova Danza), as well as the mix of theater and circus. Il Volo di Giulietta presents, for the first time, the relationship between the parties and the characters through a journey into dream: the use of sound elements and circus techniques are an integral part of choreography, the electronic music by Patrizia Oliva, the adaptations from the famous ballet of 1935 composed by Sergej Prokof’ev and text as a sound score, blend with Stefano Giust’s drums and percussion instruments, featuring voices and performers’ movement, bringing in technical scenes with tools like circle, fabrics, acrobatics and dance.
Pierpaolo Capovilla ‘Obtorto Collo Tour’
Pierpaolo Capovilla voice and electric bass guitar
Guglielmo Pagnozzi alto sax, clarinet and keyboard
Kole Laca keyboards and electronics
Alberto N. A. Turra electric guitar
Francesco Lobina electric bass guitar
Stefano Giust drums and percussion
“Obtorto Collo… The contribution of producer Taketo Gohara and twenty wonderful musicians who came to play these songs was crucial. Without them, this record would never have seen the light. It is certainly my first solo work, but it was done and designed by a group of musicians, from a “collective brain”. And I would say the same thing on the band with whom I play on stage this repertoire. Weeks of rehearsals to re-arrange the songs, without betraying the spirit. A tiring chore, but compelling. Alberto Turra brought his guitar talent, developing it with an elegance from another era, Stefano Giust, which is from the avant-garde, plays the drums like a ghost, he touches, caresses and slaps as no one in Italy. Kole Laca and Checco Lobina, respectively keyboards and bass, are musicians of great experience and considerable thickness. Finally Guglielmo Pagnozzi on alto sax… What arranger! And what a talent! Forgive me this hagiography… I am beginning to let me kidnap from enthusiasm too!” Pierpaolo Capovilla interviewed on Urban Week
“Complexity and elegance at Villa Ada (Rome). Pierpaolo Capovilla surprises his audience hooked by music and words, shaken by a great band. All musicians play a key role in the reconstruction of the impromptu and difficult atmospheres of “Obtorto Collo”, it’s thank to them that improvisation is without uncertainty. Capovilla satisfies the audience, invested with an emotional charge that is hard to forget.” Zai.net
“This live act is the result of one of the most sincere and intriguing songwriters of the Italian music scene. Turn off the spotlight, on stage (of Villa Ada) begins to take shape a sextet of musicians who would soon give birth to Obtorto Collo. Fifteen interpretations, the artist is generous and makes notes that touch the heart and leave a lasting impression. Intimate, sweet and painful. The musical show is valuable and the stage presence of Capovilla captures the audience. For him, every song becomes a literary device. Capovilla puts in music each of us present in the parterre. In the final, a masterful execution of Lilicka.” Qube Music
“Great evening last night, at Circolo Magnolia Segrate. The sharp and intense lyrics such as the music played by an excellent band, make the audience completely engrossed and captivated by the live show and the interpretation that Capovilla made with the words of his songs. Throughout the live, he talk about sensitive issues, such as violence against women, dead by State’s hands in “82 hours”, which is the story of Francesco Mastrogiovanni, who died after 82 hours of mistreatment (TSO) at a psychiatric clinic.” Dafen Project
“With a truly exceptional band, the concert immediately materializes into an intimate space and sometimes suffocating such as the album, with hallucinated atmospheres enriched by precise timbres and finish. The band has the task of shaping the songs, to build lightning solos and pull the thread on which Capovilla can move, without fall, free to give vent to all his inspiration and initiative.” Outsiders
“The artists on stage embody a complex disharmony, in the physicality of their bodies, in the expert gestural movements from which the sounds borns, strong and precise, lash the air, filling it with an impassibile tension.” OnDetour
“An hour and a half of music and words that has gathered around him an audience that is rapt and attentive to the interpretation of the artist, in an intense atmosphere made so well thanks to the great musicians beside him. A show engaging and touching, that truly deserves to be lived.” Musica Rock
“Pierpaolo Capovilla won. Once again. I witnessed to two dates of the tour Obtorto Collo. There is an elegance that surprises. Capovilla is a born actor: he’s good, he knows how to move, with that piercing gaze and his voice a bit husky. And if you like the concert, it’s not only about Pierpaolo, but also because behind him there are a great professionals that make everything wonderful. The audience responds at the best, very involved.” Le Ringhiere
“Go to the next concert and enjoy it all. Yes, because the energy that comes from the stage is impressive; Pierpaolo sings, recites, he says, he is passionate. And the audience with him. It raises an ovation, of course also directed to the musicians who accompany him, a true force.” Outune
Pierpaolo Capovilla is well known as founder and singer of Il Teatro Degli Orrori and One Dimensional Man. He is also active on musical readings (Pier Paolo Pasolini, Vladimir Majakovskij and others). In 2012 he was named ‘Man of the Year’ by the famous Italian magazine L’Espresso. This group is formed by great musicians already involved in many projects ranging through jazz, free jazz, rock, afrobeat, electronic, experimental music, Klezmer music, New Orleans blues, contemporary music, free improvised music, soundtracks for cinema and theater. The band plays in concert the music – arranged for live shows – from his wonderful debut album Obtorto Collo, co-written with composer Paki Zennaro (Carolyn Carlson) and produced by Taketo Gohara; published on May 27th 2014 by Universal. Tour production by BPM Concerti. Liquid light show: Max Klein; audio: Giulio Ragno Favero, Elvis Graffi, Simo Sant.
Pierpaolo Capovilla ‘Interiezioni’
Pierpaolo Capovilla direction, narrating voice, whispers and screams
Paki Zennaro live electronics, guitar, synth and samplers
Guglielmo Pagnozzi alto sax, clarinet, live electronics and percussions
Angelo Urso double bass
Stefano Giust drums and percussion
Short selection from the official presentation: “Interjections – twofold poetics robbery and flight screaming from the daily horrors. From an idea of Pierpaolo Capovilla, voice of the well known band Il Teatro Degli Orrori and Paki Zennaro, experimental composer and historical collaborator of Carolyn Carlson was born “Interiezioni”, a meta-show theatrical poised between poetry and musical experimentation. The texts of representation were chosen from Antonin Artaud and Carmelo Bene. Accompanied by three musicians of great talent such as Stefano Giust, avant-garde jazz drummer internationally renowned, Guglielmo Pagnozzi, saxophonist from many artistic interests, afro-beat, jazz, avant-garde, rock, Angelo Urso, virtuoso of the double bass and of course Paki Zennaro (here with his live elecrtonics, but also on guitar and samples), Pierpaolo Capovilla will offer an exciting and disturbing reading of the verses of Artaud and Bene. With video installation by Fania Palma and Enea Garrapa. An ambitious, risky and a bit crazy project, but for this very close to the poetic spirit that animated the two great protagonists of twentieth-century theater. Crossing the direction painful and angry by Antonin Artaud with the irreverent and desecrating irony of Carmelo Bene, “Interiezioni” aims to rediscover the two authors in a new light, contemporary and experimental, arbitrary in form but intimately consistent with the poetic content. An event in the sign of the great poetry of the twentieth century, revised in the spirit of modernity.”
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