Swing and smiles at the start Renzo Arbore with Sugarpie & the Candymen
It’s Renzo Arbore who inaugurates, with the band “Sugarpie and the Candymen”, on April 16th at 9 PM, the first show “Cremona Jazz Festival 2015” at the Giovanni Arvedi concert hall in the Violin’s Museum. He’s a great italian artist, charismatic personality of the national jazz, president of the Umbria Jazz Foundation and honorary president of the Jazz House in Rome, but above all great talent scout with an unfailing flair for discovering and launching young artists. He agreed to be the godfather for the show, to prove the famous brands’ interest towards the birth of a new artistic project, aimed at bringing back under the Torrazzo, after an absence of several years, this kind of music, left confined in the limited entourage of clubs and jazz lovers. For this reason Arbore will appear as a special guest in the “Sugarpie & the Candymen”’s show, entering only later, after the concert’s beginning, carrying on playing with the five performers. It’s a totally genuine and not institutionalized artistic association, between the multifaceted artist from Foggia, uncontested star performer in Italy in the last half century, and the band born in 2008 when five performers from Piacenza and Cremona, in love with swing, gipsy, jazz, pop, and vocal harmonies had met. “ They get to know each other for the first time at the Ascona Jazz Festival – explains Adriano Fabi, the artists’ manager – Renzo was enchanted by their new way of arranging music pieces, so we proposed them for the Christmas’ concert, making sure that Arbore played a music piece with them. After all, this is a peculiarity of Renzo’s artistic mentality; he has always been a great talent scout giving his personal brand to many initiatives: he has an exuberant, spontaneous, not institutionalized way in meeting the others, amusing his self feeling the same thrill of improvisation”. The band with whom Arbore will show up at the Giovanni Arvedi concert hall, is formed by the singer Miss “Sugarpie”, a.k.a. Georgia Ciavatta, and by her candymen: Jacopo Delfini (gipsy guitar and vocal harmonies) from Cremona, Renato Podestà (guitar, banjo and vocal harmonies), Roberto Lupo (drums) and Claudio Ottaviano (double bass). The Emilian band enjoys itself rearranging up-to-date pieces with the enthusiasm and the atmospheres of the 30’s. They have a powerful and captivating live show, enriched by original arrangements, sophisticated harmonies and swing, mambo, samba and boogie-woogie typical rhythms. In their repertory we can find Christina Aguilera and Ray Charles, The Clash and Frank Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald and Guns ‘n’ Roses. The band has also released three CDs for the Italian jazz label, IRMA Records – La Douce.
In their career the quintet has performed on the stages of several clubs,theaters and festivals all over the world, such as the Jazz Ascona Festival (for three years), the Bergmanstrasse Festival, the Summer Jamboree Festival, the Madrid Jazz Festival, performing in prestigious locations such as the Bayerischer Hof Hotel in Monaco, Bavaria, the Irish House in New Orleans, the Wolfsberg Konferenzzentrum in Ermatingen, Switzerland. At the concert in Cremona, the band will play some new titles expressly prepared together with Renzo Arbore. “ We have knowledge of your concert hall, and its magnificent acoustics – remarks Adriano Fabi, the manager – meanwhile we received the offer of a concert with “Sugarpie& the Candymen” with Renzo as special guest; since it was doable, we accepted with enthusiasm”. The other festival’s appointments are confirmed. On thursday 23rd of April, the Hungarian jazz guitarist Ferenc Snetberger will play with the Nardor Quartet, formed by Gyula Gabora (violin), Nador Farkas (second violin), Emil Csonka (viola) and Marcell Vamos (cello). Latin passion, indian music and the knowledge of Johann Sebastian Bach flow into Snetberger’s instrument, the guitar. With Markus Stockhausen, trumpet and flugelhorn solo artist, Snetberger founded an original duo which recorded two CDs for the label Enja. Then he collaborated with the Tunisian musician Dhafer Youssef and with the vibes’ player David Friedman. On April 28th performs Ron Carter, a jazz idol, born in 1937, a double bass virtuoso endowed with great professionalism and with an extraordinary technical skill. He can boast more than 500 CDs and collaborations with Miles Davis Herbie Hancock and Tony Williams, three instrumentalists who merged the technical rigor and the virtuosity with the harmonic malleability, creating a section which would have led to many imitations. At the Cremona festival he shows up with Russel Malone, Diana Krall’s guitarist and Donald Vega at the piano. On thursday 30th of April, the International Jazz Day, John Scofield will go on stage with the Pablo Held Trio. This meeting between the young german pianist trio and one of the stars of the international fusion, the american guitarist John Scofield, is somewhat surprisingly: the drummer Bill Stewart, often with Scofield, had already listened to the trio, and so was born Scofield’s attention for a kind of music with which he usually does not confront himself. Together with Pablo Held, there are the loyal Robert Landfermann at the double bass and Jonas Burgwinkel at the drums, two young compatriots with whom he has made up for a long time a trio, quite experienced in its dynamics. To end in style, on wednesday 13th of may, the great voice of Dianne Reeves, who has just gained the 57th Grammy Awards for the Best Jazz Vocal Album, with a new fascinating work entitled “Beautiful Life”, published with the memorable label Concord Records. Dianne Reeves boasts many Grammy victories, without forgetting the Oscar for the best soundtrack in the multi-Oscar-nominated George Clooney’s film “Good Night and Good Luck”. The great Winton Marsalis, with whom she collaborated in her Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra, said : “ For me Dianne is one of the most powerful and precise voices, not just in the contemporary music, but of all time”. At the Cremona festival she shows up with her group: Romero Lubambo (guitar), Peter Martin (piano), Reuben Rogers (double bass) and Greg Hutchinson (drums).
da Mondo padano del 13 febbraio 2014
(traduzione Chiara Voltini)