Vocabolo S. Martino has just been mixed. We are listening to it with Gianni Coscia, trying to understand from the source its secrets, its deep origins, following how it develops from the staff to the meeting with the performers during the recording sessions. This work has been recorded more than five years after Il Bandino and nearly ten after La Briscola, completing a kind of “B trilogy”, since Vocabolo S. Martino is based on La Bottega, as the accordionist and composer from Alessandria called it. But before going forward, let’s consider the inputs that Gianni Coscia wants to present to us.

It is necessary to start with La Briscola, -he opens- a game played not by the musicians, but by the five characters of the suite: Battista, il Moro, my father, Ernesto and il Professore. Il bandino, also based on evocative, but more ironic, music, revived somehow the band section that after the procession along the village streets, played dance-music during the night feast. On the contrary, La Bottega is a kind of display – a “sale” – of feelings of the following phases of my life. La Bottega’s folk roots are reviewed critically through very different experiences and culture. And it has been conceived not in my place of origin, Piedmont, but in my landing place, Umbria.

Actually, this review can be felt, also for the chamber ensemble playing together with the usual jazz band.

It’s a classical chamber ensemble, similar to those used by  Hindemit or Milhaud: flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon and horn. This because I have listened for some years virtually only to classical music.

To what, for instance? To anything: I am lazy and I listen to the radio, especially driving. A review, as we were saying: on the one hand classical music, on the other Umbria, to which Vocabolo S. Martino, the main composition of this CD, is dedicated. Vocabolo S. Martino, the subtitle of which could be Fotogrammi d’Ambiente (Pictures Of The Enviroment), is a suite made up of shorts flashes showing sighns of the new pictures to which I am exposed.

Why did Umbria, apart from classical music, take you to discover this path?

Maybe it was because my place of origin has no longer the strong, atavic appeal it once had, I have only to look at the hills or to walk among the people to feel all the deep-rooted experienced past. In this sense, Umbria is a purer experience, free from certain conditioned responses. And maybe it is a far-reaching land: a ruined home there are catacombs, a Roman bridge of the Punic War’s time….Maybe, the coupling between classical music together with the picture of a world filled with an ancient culture and a religious feeling that do not exist in our parts, produces the music I write today. Among other things, the names of the villages are very characteristic: the places are called “Vocabolo”. This is why Vocabolo S. Martino: it is the place where I live. As I was saying, the suite is conceived in pictures. It is as glancing through test strips; to each one of them I gave a title. The first one is I Girasoli (The Sunflowers), referring to a joy bright picture.

In this work you used the vibraphone, an uncommon instrument for you.

I used it many years ago. In spite of the completely different instruments, sometimes this composition recall to my mind Gil Evans. The there are Il Vento E La Quercia (The Wind and the Oak), Gli Ulivi (The Olive-Trees) and Il Sogno di Laura (Laura’s Dream), a tender homage to her, who granted to wish for a house in Umbria.

Also in the titles your style can be identified. It’s interesting the role played by Gianluigi Trovesi, who plays both in the chamber quintet, in obbligatos, and in the jazz quartet, and in the jazz quartet, in the inprovised parts.

He serves skilfully two masters, playing the Bb clarinet, a very rare fact for him, in the chamber ensemble, that required it, while plays the others clarinets in jazz solos.

There are not percussions.

I don’t think that the music suffers from this lack. However. There is a strong rhythmic pulse, and Dulbecco takes part in it very well, imaginatively. In the following 5/4 piece, La Festa (The Feast), we listen to a kind of a stadium “ola”.

The work of Enzo Pietropaoli seems to me very relevant.

There are not many double-bass players able to manage the situation without drums. This theme is for Silvia e Bud (Silvia and Bud), dedicated to my youngest daughter, who loves this Adagio very much, and to our dog. They are inseparable. The following piece is La Favola Dell’Oro (The Gold Legend). People tell that in our property had been hidden some gold. Later on there is an over-emphatic collective improvisation depicting four men digging…

Listen to this music, many people will think to Stravinskij.

No other musicians affected me as Stravinskij did: his influence can be heard in any work written by me….I called this waltz Pomeriggio Danzante (The Afternoon Dance). Its harmonic structure satisfies me very much. In it 3/4 and 4/4 measures alternate. Then there are Il Giuggiolo E IL Moro (The Jujube and the Mulberry), about two plants in my field L’Edicola di S. Martino (Martino’s Aedicula), destroyed seeking the gold. Here and there short refrains of the themes can be heard. The ending is a refrain of Silvia E Bud theme that remains on a sixth chord, in the Forties style, typical of Angelini’s Orchestra.

The title of the following composition is Tredici per un Blues (Blues in Thirteen), because it has one measure too much, in comparison with the twelve ones of a traditional blues.

There it is. Since I play, I hear that a jazzman who plays a blues in thirteen measures in a bad one. So, I wanted to show that one can be play also a thirteen measures blues. I think that it works well, also as a base for the improvisations. Here are typical big band figures. This work is a kind of bet, a provocation.

Let’s go on. Why in this CD, entirely written by you, you included your arrangement of Luis Bacalov’s Il Postino?

First of all, because I love this theme. In the second place, because of Bacalov’s thoughtfulness in appearing with his music in this movie, so beautiful in itself, not longing for laying an important role. At last, this theme seemed to me very suitable for this kind of ensemble…And it has been suggested to me by Umbria: perhaps in Alessandria either this ensemble or this theme would not come in my mind.

Two solo accordion compositions end you CD. The first one is La Montanara Per Gioco (La Montanara For Fun).

La Montanara is a well-known theme, and I wanted to brush it up for fun, as said in the title. The title of the last composition, that is still an embryo, is 5/4 Di Sole (5/4 Of The Sun). In its beginning, there is a harmonic superposition. I had been thinking of this theme for quite a time, and decided to dig it up for the occasion. It could be and idea for the next work.

Alberto Bazzurro

1. Vocabolo San Martino (G.Coscia) 1°  parte
2. Vocabolo San Martino (G.Coscia) 2°  parte
3. Tredici per un blues (G.Coscia)
4. Il Postino (Luis Bacalov - arr. G.Coscia)
5. La Montanara per gioco (elab. per fisarmonica di G.Coscia)
6. Cinque quarti di sole (G.Coscia)

12'49"

11'16"

8'42"

6'36"

5'21"

1'35"

Gianluigi Trovesi, clarinetti

Enzo Pietropaoli, contrabbasso

Andrea Dulbecco, vibrafono

Gianni Coscia, fisarmonica

Quartetto Kandinsky: Nicola Protani, flauto; Simone Frondini, oboe; Tsang Shien Yung, fagotto; Eolo Pignattini, corno