Sugar Pie & The Candymen sweet like a swing

The show that inaugurates, on Thursday 16th of April, the first edition of CremonaJazz, is arising exactly during these days, upstairs in the studio at Renzo Arbore’s house in Rome. The masters’s guests are Sugar Pie (Georgia Ciavatta) and the Candymen (Jacopo Delfini, Renato Podestà, Claudio Ottaviano and Roberto Lupo): “ Renzo is compelling. He’s the Italian icon for swing music”, tells the quintet from Piacenza (with an ‘infiltrator’ who, at the Museo del Violino, will be on his home ground). “There will be his great hits which make everyone sing. Then something from our repertoire”.
They introduce themselves in this way: as if the Beatles would have played in Duke Ellington’s orchestra.
Georgia’s feminine lead voice, and Jacopo and Renato ‘s (the guitarists) male ones, pulled by Claudio (double bass) and Roberto (drums)’s rhythmic, take great pop-rock culture’s music pieces and immerse them in the Forties. Britney Spears, Madonna, Beyoncé, Deep Purple, Queen…
In their last album, Waiting for the one, there’s really something to have fun with: “The secret – they explain – is harmonious. We choose pieces which are born with a blues matrix, pieces that somehow can bring back to the afro-american roots and we insert them in the swing era”. Wherever swing is … “it’s a way for staying on time and pronounce a certain kind of musical language. Playing swing – Roberto explains – means rolling the music… so the answer is yes: even to play the Beatles you need swing”.
Certainly, british pop has different roots, irish roots, “Terribly white, so it’s really difficult to make this genre a ‘black’ one”. But sometimes you try. And you succeed: “Bohemian Rhapsody has been Renato’s great challenge”. The vocal arrangements for three voices, so different… it wasn’t easy at all. But the result is incredible. At least for Brian May… Queen’s guitarist in person ran across the Sugar Pie & The Candymen’s version, he shared it on his blog with an introductory line: “These guys are really creative. I hope you will appreciate them”. The influential invitation reaches Cremona’s audience too. The Queen swing version will come to the ‘Arvedi’ concert hall, they’ll play their international hits’ versions and some unreleased songs: “It’s our dreams’ location”, they explain. Maybe, for Jacopo Delfini, it’s even more: “Cremona is my city and I’m really happy to come back here to play. For me it’s like a coming full circle and a new start: here I began studying the guitar with Carmelo Tartamella and now I’ll play with Arbore in this place which is a symbol for music. I hope – he remarks – that an event like this will be able to stimulate the city. Nowadays, high quality live music has still little space. CremonaJazz can revive the scene”.
Thanks to some legendary names as Ferenc Snetberger, Ron Carter, John Scofield and Dianne Reeves, but to Renzo Arbore and Sugar Pie & The Candymen’s vivid colors too. Georgia was a ballet dancer: “ On the stage I always try to remember it, also because I’m with musicians who make me want to dance”. She smiles, while she savors a croissant in the middle of the morning: “Now you know why I’m Sugar Pie: I can’t say no to sweets. But I’m not the first one, before me there was Sugar Pie De Santo, a great voice”. And the guys? “Well, they’re my candy-men”.
It’s sweeter, in this way. “ We played in different jazz bands, but we felt the necessity of meeting each other. We were looking for something that joined jazz and pop music together. Swing was coming back in fashion and we wanted to ride the wave of the moment with something attractive”. An handful of hair wax to Guns and Roses: “At any rate, it intrigued”.
That’s how Sugar Pie & The Candymen’s history began; they’ve been traveling on and on for the majority of the year, between clubs and festivals in Europe for seven years: “ It’s the most regular employment I’ve ever had” Roberto smiles. “In Italy we still do not have attention”, they acknowledge it. That’s why, next to the music revivals which continue to grow, the project began to move towards the ‘writing territories’. In the last album there are some unpublished works, with an interesting variety of influences. One song, Dusty, it’s a preview for their next work, an album with unpublished works in italian. It’s Georgia’s portrait that comes from Roberto’s pen: ‘If you forgive me for my cheerfulness, you can understand who I am’. “In this quote there’s our soul – comments the singer – that considers not to be too serious”. No long faces, but colorful clothes on the stage and a lot of movement: “ we try to make the audience have fun, we try to give some relief, since everyone needs it in this period. But without being kitsch. Because – she adds – to understand who we really are, we have to catch the seriousness, the diligence that we have in our work”. They all teach music, they have a grounded competence that allows the band to continuously grow in different aspects: “ We are many projects in one. We try to have different artistic options, always new incitements”. The music rolls lightly, the swing is the right one: Renzo Arbore had no doubt. Neither Brian May…

Mondo Padano del 3 aprile 2015 (traduzione Chiara Voltini)