The ANNOTICO Report

While American and French traditions have long histories and strong roots
in Jazz, Italian jazz has only recently just come to blossom.

The "Umbria Jazz Festival  has become the most important festival in Italy
and in Europe.

Hard bop and free jazz attest to the influence of American and French
players who have traditionally defined jazz aesthetics. But there is
another jazz that is Italian by design - the product of a revolutionary
will. It has created what "Now  is the best moment for Italian jazz in the
last 30 years.

And the jewel in Italy's crown is 15-year-old saxophonist Francesco Cafiso.

The director of  the Umbria Jazz Festival, Paulo Fresu calls the teen "an
incredible milagro" - a miracle.

After playing an encore with Cafiso at the Blue Note's franchise in Milan,
Wynton Marsalis, the artistic director of jazz at New York's Lincoln Centre
and the rooster atop American jazz's weather vane, told Reuters: "I never
heard anyone play jazz like him at that age. Never." When Cafiso was 14,
Marsalis invited him on tour, but school would not allow it. Today,
Marsalis displays his prodigy at the Lincoln Centre with regular guest
appearances.

The Age
Melbourne, Australia
May 1, 2005

Why is Melbourne hosting the Umbria Jazz Festival? Marc Moncrief discovers
that these days, jazz is as Italian as fine food, clothes and wine.

Within days, a Malaysia Airlines Boeing will land at Tullamarine packed
with tourists, business people and families. But if you happen to be at the
gate when it arrives, don't be surprised if the lounge greetings are a bit
more musical than most. More than 40 of the plane's passengers count
themselves among Europe's jazz elite.

This week, the much anticipated Umbria Jazz Festival arrives in Melbourne.
Umbria is a name that evokes ancient walls and rolling hills. But jazz?
What is Italian jazz? And why should Melburnians turn out to taste it?

He doesn't often tour outside Europe, but on that continent, 40-year-old
Sardinian trumpeter Paulo Fresu has a name uttered alongside those of jazz
pillars Miles Davis and Chet Baker. He plays about 250 shows a year and in
2000, he won a Django d'Or award, the French equivalent of the American
grammy, for his CD Melos.

Fresu told Preview that Italy may not be immediately associated with jazz,
but it should.

"This is the best moment for Italian jazz in the last 30 years," he said
while picking arpeggios on the piano in his Bologna home. "It's a fantastic
situation here."

The standard jazz fare is, of course, available from Italy. Hard bop and
free jazz attest to the influence of American and French players who have
traditionally defined jazz aesthetics. But there is another jazz that is
Italian by design - the product of a revolutionary will that kept the
movement alive through the repressions of the 20th century.

During the ‘40s, when jazz wrote the soundtrack to war and what Americans
still call "the greatest generation", foreign art was banned in Italy under
dictator Benito Mussolini. Jazz, at its core, is about innovation. And
innovation sat uncomfortably with Mussolini's purist regime.

As a result, the music burrowed underground until the end of the war like a
bulb waiting to sprout. And today, while American and French traditions
have long histories and strong roots, Italian jazz has only just come to
blossom.

"We have people that play with Italian songs, like opera or Neapolitana
music - music from Naples. Also we have people that mix jazz with folk or
ethnic music like Sardinian music or music from Sicily," Fresu said. "This
is the reason why Italian jazz now is a fantastic mix with all different
kinds of music. The personality is very clear."

And the focal point for this culture is the Umbria festival.

"Umbria jazz is the most important festival in Italy and in Europe, I
think," said Fresu, himself the director of a festival that draws 35,000 to
his home village of Berchidda, population 3000.

"The festival is the best visa card for the culture or the artist. It is a
good idea that Carlo Pagnotta can bring the festival to Melbourne and to
other countries."

Pagnotta, a veteran of three decades promoting jazz, said that even 15
years ago the music had not matured after its late gestation.

"We came late, because during the war we couldn't play jazz because of
fascism. But now, for many people, in Italy we play the best jazz in
Europe."

Pagnotta said that when he began promoting internationally under the name
Umbria Jazz in 1983, Italian jazz was not highly regarded.

"I used to bring Italian musicians to the Blue Note. But only on Monday.
You know, Monday is normally the day off for the program."

The Blue Note in New York's Greenwich Village is one of the foremost jazz
venues in the world. These days, Pagnotta's nights there are held in higher
esteem. He said that last year, when he brought Trieste's Enrico Rava and
his quintet, audiences queued in the snow for a ticket.

But this year, the jewel in Pagnotta's crown is 15-year-old saxophonist
Francesco Cafiso. Fresu calls the teen "an incredible milagro" - a miracle.

After playing an encore with Cafiso at the Blue Note's franchise in Milan,
Wynton Marsalis, the artistic director of jazz at New York's Lincoln Centre
and the rooster atop American jazz's weather vane, told Reuters: "I never
heard anyone play jazz like him at that age. Never."

When Cafiso was 14, Marsalis invited him on tour, but school would not
allow it. Today, Marsalis displays his prodigy at the Lincoln Centre with
regular guest appearances.

When Preview spoke to Cafiso, he was preparing to travel to the US for the
New Orleans Jazz Festival before continuing to Melbourne. In June, he will
play for Marsalis at the Dizzy club, a new venue at the Lincoln Centre, for
a week-long engagement. He will have just turned 16. At that age, playing
the Dizzy club at all is an awesome achievement. Booking it for a week is
madness.

"He's just incredible. When he's onstage, he's so mature,'' Pagnotta said.

It is a characteristic palpable in video clips of the teenager, available
online. He stands, nonchalant, before the Lincoln Centre Orchestra, the
most prestigious jazz ensemble in New York - probably the world. Above him,
his face is magnified several hundred times on a projection screen as
Marsalis blows a subdued trumpet. He looks like a teenager in a theme park
photo booth preparing for the camera to turn on him and flash.

When Marsalis abdicates the microphone, Cafiso's shoulders hunch up as if
he is too short to reach his mouthpiece. He closes his eyes and lets loose
a barrage. For a few minutes, he is all sweat and tension. When he is
finished, he grins. Marsalis nods and Cafiso turns to amble humbly off
stage.

Pagnotta said that Cafiso played at the Lincoln Centre on his birthday last
year. When Cafiso came onstage, Marsalis had the orchestra play Happy
Birthday in front of an audience of 2500.

"It could happen to me, I think I would die in a second. No. He played
incredibly. It was a standing ovation - more than 2000 people standing
ovation for more than five minutes."

For Pagnotta, watching such an ovation reaffirms the impact his festival
and the artists it has engendered have had on jazz.

"Ten or 15 years ago, it was not possible (for Italy to produce a musician
like Cafiso) because we had only old artists with big experience. Now we
have so (much) new young talent that it is incredible," he said.

"We have many many incredible young musicians - this is the best thing -
but the problem is that we have no space for all," Fresu said. "It's very
important to export Italian jazz to other countries."

And thus, the Boeing, arriving soon. Its passengers are not simply
musicians. They are emissaries for a new designer export.

Umbria Jazz Festival - Melbourne 05 runs from May 5 to May 15.

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Music/Never-too-latte/2005/04/
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