Rita Marcotulli - Night Caller

Rita Marcotulli was born in Rome in 1959. She studied the piano from a very early age at the Santa Cecilia Academy. At first attracted to Brazilian music she turned towards Jazz at twenty… with great success. Her career got of to a flying start. Right from the start of the 1980s she had the chance to play with the cream of European jazz: Chet Baker, John Christensen, Palle Danielsson, Peter Erskine, Steve Grossman, Joe Henderson, Hélène La Barrière, Joe Lovano, Charlie Mariano, Tony Oxley, Michel Portal, Enrico Rava, Michel Bénita, Aldo Romano, Kenny Wheeler...
Her intimate playing, of a great deepness, and her subtle arrangements that emphasise a note and amplify its emotional charge, allowed her to make many encounters, particularly with other arts, such as cinema, which she has done a lot of composing for: “My music was obviously influenced by the work of a number of great artists: Thelonius Monk, Elis Regina, Bill Evans, John Coltrane, just to cite a few. But above the world of sound, it has been influenced by so many other experiences, artistic, literary, visual and naturally cinematographic. In particular, I’ve always felt a great affinity between the poetic world that I try to express and that of one of the sharpest film-directors of all time, François Truffaut. Nostalgia for childhood, a vocation for flight, a respect for timidity, the ambiguity of love, the sense of life going by, the struggle between innocence and experience are all notions that can be found throughout Truffaut’s work and these same feelings are often to be found behind the notes of my compositions and arrangements”. Never had Truffaut’s cinema had such a great tribute as The Woman Next Door, recorded in 1997.
The Italian pianist is also very attracted by dance. Her manner of occupying space, of drawing volumes of sound like authentic characters seduced choreographers such as Roberta Garrisson and Teri J. Weikel.
With Rita Marcotulli, Jazz reveals its capacity to attach itself to bodies and to invest places, so as to create an atmosphere that carries the audience off into a world of feeling.

Mauro Ottolini - Sousaphonix

Mauro Ottolini is a multi-instrumentalist and his music - rising from the brass instruments he plays, is a varied as the instruments he plays. The use of the trombone and its various mutes, the flashing slide trumpet and the full-bodied but agile saxophone inspires Ottolini to create pieces that express his complex personality, the result of a personal musical history that includes classical, operatic, popular, jazz and Afro-American music.
Within the complex identity game imposed on us by our times, the trombonist and composer's artistic response is to produce modern, dynamic music which passes agilely over stylistic, geographic and temporal frontiers. This doesn't mean casting a net in a post-modern spirit into the world of sounds and fishing out whatever comes up : Ottolini and his musicians ( among whom we find Daniele D'Agaro and Fulvio Sigurta', who play important roles ) move according to a very personal musical compass. This points towards New Orleans jazz ( recalled in a piece, bearing the same name by Carmichael, that begins as a ballad and ends in the sweltering streets of that famous southern city ) , not as a revival, but as a recovery of polyphony, hereby liberally using sound materials and exposing the musical roots of the music. Sousaphonix takes a non-linear route that passes through pieces by Duke Ellington, both lesser known ( Tina ) and Caribbean ( Jamaica Tomboy ), and a tune by Lester Bowie, drippin with groove and feeling ( Charlie M. ), or band-like and shamanic ( Silver Threads Among The Gold ), concluding with a tribute to Steven Bernstein. Little Slide Funk, the name of this chaotic, metallic, liquid piece - that opens ( not by chance ) the album - highlight other poetic trait of Ottolini and his group, in which the younger generation is represented ( Dan Kinzelman on reeds and the transversal Zeno De Rossi on drums ): acoustic instruments ( such as Vincenzo Castrini's accordion ) co-exist and dialogue with their electric counterparts ( Enrico Terranoli's electric guitar, Vincenzo Vasi's theremin ), weaving electronics and effects into the various pieces. The compositional and improvitional concepts may originate as acoustic, but they are subsequently developed along the circuitous paths of electronics and computers. But Ottolini's music maintains its fiery, forceful character, its popular roots and band extractions inserting themselves well into blues and reggae, with a strong narrative sense, demostrating a profound assimilation of the languages of jazz that the trombonist -together with Daniele D'Agaro's masterful tenor sax - manifests in various segments.
In his recent book " Le eta' del Jazz. I contemporanei ( publ. il Saggiatore )", the italian music critic, Claudio Sessa identifies the traits of jazz over recent decades :"the exploration of a new freedom of timbre (...); the strong growth of what we could call "national Schools", aimed at (...) recovering various African roots prevailing to datev; the confirmation of sophisticated Mannerism flowing into the birth of "repertory" jazz, capableof interlacing philological research with the individualistic needs that have always existed in this music ( jazz ).
This words pefectly describe Sousaphonix's music and attest to its fruitul rapport with tradition and the contemporary.
Luigi Onoiri ( Music critic for "Il Manifesto), teacher of Jazz History at the consrvatory "L. Refice" in Frosinone, Italy )

Giovanni Guidi - The Unknown Rebel Band

A suite for rebellious women and men,whose names remain unknown.
Rebels of a different time, from different parts of the world.
A composition where the voices of anonymous women and men can emerge from silence,
defining them and, at the same time, uniting them in a chorus
for the same ideals that marked their lives.
"The Unknown rebel" suite represents them, and us and all of those peolple whose commitment to the future is a passion.

Giovanni Guidi

Giovanni Guidi presenta il suo ultimo lavoro discografico "The Unknown Rebel" CAM JAZZ alla testa di un tentetto, denominato The Unknown Rebel Band. Il giovane pianista umbro è al terzo album per l'etichetta romana, dopo "Indian Summer" e "The House Behind This One" incisi in quartetto.

Attualmente, oltre a suonare con i propri gruppi, collabora con ENRICO RAVA NEW QUINTET, ENRICO RAVA SPECIAL EDITION, FABRIZIO SFERRA TRIO, GIANLUCA PETRELLA COSMIC BAND, MAURO NEGRI QUARTET, LELLO PARETI BAND.

Il CD racconta in musica storie di straordinarie libertà, lo spirito di ribellione e giustizia che attraversa e muove i popoli.

E' un lungo viaggio dalla guerra di Liberazione (IL PARTIGIANO JOHNNY, PAISA', NAPOLI 27 - 30 SETTEMBRE 1943), alla Primavera di Praga (PRASKE' JARO), attraverso i desaparecidos argentini (GARAGE OLIMPO), alla legge Basaglia (180 -75), che sancì la fine della segregazione per migliaia di malati psichici, alle lotte anticolonialiste nel Sud del mondo (SONO SETU UBUMNYAMA, QUEIMADA), al genocidio dei pellirossa (WOUNDED KNEE), alla rivoluzione in Messico (TIERRA Y LIBERTAD), alla guerra civile spagnola del '39 (GUERNICA) alla rivolta di Piazza Tien an Men - da qui la denominazione "The Unknown Rebel" dalla foto di quel ribelle sconosciuto in camicia bianca davanti ai carri armati, entrata nell'immaginario collettivo con una delle immagini più note e potenti della storia moderna.

Con Giovanni al pianoforte ci saranno Mauro Ottolini (trombone), Mirko Rubegni, Fulvio Sigurtà (tromba), Dan Kinzelman (sax tenore), che ha curato anche gli arrangiamenti, Daniele Tittarelli (sax alto), David Brutti (sax basso), Francesco Ponticelli (contrabbasso), Joao Lobo (batteria), Michele Rabbia (percussioni).

Vittorio Mezza Trio ( Abeat Jazz 073 )

Vittorio Mezza, is considered one of the most interesting and original pianist on the new italian jazz scene. With the help of two “supermusicians” as Massimo Moriconi and Ettore Fioravanti gave birth to a musical project of extraordinary artistic depht, great novelty both stylistic and of ideas. It’s remarkable a strong component of swing and interplay, a quality is becoming rarest.
The cd suggests some excellent original songs, some evocative themes by Petrucciani, Shorter, Monk and closes with an homage to Nirvana.

He was born in Maddaloni (Italy). After having completed his studies in classical music, he moved to Rome where got his Diploma and Bachelor in jazz music in Jazz Music from the ”S. Cecilia Conservatory of Music”. He lives in Rome and he has attended various courses like the Berklee Summer School to Umbria Jazz, the Seminars and the two-year master of high improvement for Jazz Trios in Siena, the David Liebman Chromatic Jazz Master Class in the USA, The New York International Jazz Workshop in the USA, the Arrangement and Composition Course at the Music University of Rome, etc. He studied under international musicians like D. Liebman, F. D' Andrea, S. Battaglia, P. Damiani, J. Taylor, F. Jegher, D. Sanborn etc., and has performed in many important International Festivals such us the French-Italian Festival of Jazz and Improvisation in Rome with the S. Cecilia Jazz Orchestra; the Roccella Jonica Jazz Festival – where he opened the concert for Wayne Shorter Quartet and then plays with the ethno-jazz ensemble of D. Montenegro - in 2005; the Bitonto Jazz Festival 2007 – where he opened the concert for the Mike Stern Band; the International Music Fest of Rome. He was semifinalist at the TIM in Marseille as well as at the Montreux Jazz Piano Solo Competition 2005, at which he was the only Italian to compete. He has played in several line-ups including the S. Cecilia Jazz Quartet, in duo with Paolo Damiani and in the P. Damiani Group, in trio with Ettore Fioravanti, Roberto Gatto and in quartet with Aldo Bassi; he has played also with D. Torto, W. Paoli, P. Condorelli, A. Onorato; in the USA with Mike Stephans, Tony Marino, Tony Moreno, Marc Mommaas; in Canada with Alec Walkington and Dave Laing (McGill University of Montréal). He has played in several international theatres and concert-halls such as the Teatro Vespasiano of Civitavecchia, Anfiteatro Romano of Benevento, Teatro Cilea and Maschio Angioino in Napoli, Real Palace of S. Leucio Caserta, Villa Pamphilj – Rome, University of Cosenza, Rome Conservatory Academic Hall, Teatro dei Contrari, Villa Giulia and Palazzo Farnese in Rome, the Deer Head Inn in Delaware GAP – Pennsylvania, USA, Upstairs Jazz Club in Montréal, Quebec...Last year he was selected by the YAMAHA Corporation to be one of the piano and keyboard performers for Italy. He has played on programmes for Rai, Rai Sat and Mediaset. He has recorded the CD "MP2 live" for the Splasc(H) Records Label and the "Solinsieme" for the Domani Musica Music and Discography Editions, still in distribution, and many other self recorded CDs. In 2006 he won the International Competition of Composition "O. Sindici" – Ceccano and the price for which was publication of a collection of original compositions for piano solo featuring a language in the area between jazz and contemporary music, by BÈRBEN International Music Edition. In 2007 he was finalist in the Roma Soundtrack Competition for composers, with an original composition for strings trio and piano. He was been reviewed by some of Italian’s top critics such as Franco Fayenz, Giordano Selini, Vittorio Lo Conte… He was noted in the category ‘best new talents 2006’ in Top Jazz, the Italian Jazz Music Referendum. He is ranked in the list of the most Italian State Music Conservatories (Rome, Venice, Ferrara, Genova, Pesaro, Potenza, Fermo, Frosinone, Trieste, Brescia, Parma, Como, Bari, Alessandria, Torino...). Last April he held a seminar for the Jazz Music class of the ‘S. Cecilia’ Rome Conservatory, about the development of languages in jazz (the topic of his book). He composed Pianogrups vol. 1 e 2 published by Berben Editions, Birth from a bird for piano published by the Florestano Editions. Now, he is working for RAI as music consultant for Italian National Television and he is teaching - as Music Conservatory Professor - for the instruction of the ' jazz piano elements' discipline at the S. Cecilia Conservatory of Rome.