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SFJAZZ Spring Season 2006 • March 17-June 17, 2006

"Il Jazz Italiano"

Enrico Rava and Stefano Bollani; Enrico Pieranunzi

Friday, April 7 • 8pm

  • $51
  • $36
  • $30
  • $25
    • “Italy has yet to produce a more accomplished jazz musician than the trumpeter Enrico Rava.”
    —The New York Times, April 4, 2006
    “Rava's tone is plush velvet [and] his ideas are impossible to anticipate.”—JazzTimes

    Hailed as “the patriarch of Italian jazz” (JazzTimes), trumpeter/flugelhornist Enrico Rava, returns to SF with pianist and countryman Stefano Bollani, a collaborator on Rava's spellbinding new CD, Tati. Sharing this all-Italian bill is Enrico Pieranunzi, “a luminously lyrical pianist, with a constant flow of ideas” (Nat Hentoff).

     


    Program Notes

    In recent years, Italy has become a vital jazz hub where the music has taken root and borne fruit. One of its leading proponents is trumpeter Enrico Rava. It's a shame he doesn't get more exposure in the U.S. He'd be a poll-topper. At last summer's Umbria Jazz Festival in Perugia, Italy, the Berklee College of Music awarded him an honorary doctorate (along with Hank Jones and McCoy Tyner) while the festival itself made Rava a jazz ambassador to the world.The trumpeter accepted the honor by saying, "I just wish my parents were still alive. I was a disaster in school, and today I'm an ambassador."

     

    At Umbria, Rava, with his multigenerational Quintetto, won the crown for best overall performance with an exciting set of tunes that featured sonic experimentations, unusual instrumental voicings, off-mike horn comping, deep-hued textures and ornamentations as well as well-disguised wisecracks that provided the show with just the right degree of levity. The concert was a playground full of capers and thrills that ended with an exclamatory bash and a happy-go-lucky, sunny and swinging encore.

     

    A jazz innovator who made waves in the '60s when he lived in New York and collaborated with soprano saxophonist Steve Lacy and bandleader Carla Bley, Rava says, "Italian jazz has really come into its own in the past 10 to 15 years. Before then there were few excellent jazz players, though we've always had strong pianists." Case in point: stellar pianist Stefano Bollani, who appears with the trumpeter this year in a duo setting, playing music from Rava's remarkable CD, Tati, released last year.

     

    While Bollani in recent years has launched his own solo career, Enrico Pieranunzi has been honing his craft since the ‘60s. Nat Hentoff calls him “a luminously lyrical pianist, with a constant flow of ideas.” Pieranunzi has collaborated with a wealth of jazz artists over the years, including Chet Baker, Art Farmer, Lee Konitz, Phil Woods and Jim Hall. His most recent stateside CD is the superb Special Encounter, a live trio date with Charlie Haden and Paul Motian.


    — Dan Ouellette

    Pre-concert Talk: 7:00pm

    "Transatlantic Jazz"

    NOTE: Pre-concert talk for ticket holders only.

    Designed to enhance audience appreciation, these 30-minute talks from the stage precede selected concerts, films and other events. Talks take place one hour before curtain, are free to ticket holders for the event to follow.


    Enrico Rava trumpet
    Stefano Bollani piano
    Enrico Peranunzi piano