Franco D'Andrea

Francesco " Franco " D' Andrea ( born March 8, 1941 in Meran ) is an Italian pianist and composer of modern jazz.

Life

D' Andrea is self-taught and began to play the piano after he had previously tried on trumpet, clarinet, double bass and saxophone. His first professional job as a musician, he was the 1963 Italian jazz pioneer Nunzio Rotondo at the state broadcaster Rai Radiotelevisione Italiana in Rome. 1964/65 he was a member of the band Gato Barbieri from. He was co-founder of avandgardistischen Modern Art Trio, with whom he played from 1968 to 1972. The recording of this group in 1970 with Bruno Tommaso and Franco Tonani was experimenting with the serial music in the style of early Art Ensemble of Chicago. The music historian Luca Bragalini writes in 2007: This record remained " until today an unsurpassed masterpiece of improvisation with series cell ". The next five years he toured with the successful and best Italian jazz rock formation Perigeo through Europe and the world, has also worked with Mario Schiano (Original Sins ) and the formation Saxes Machines. In parallel, he was involved in 1972 in the band of Gato Barbieri at the recording of the movie soundtrack The Last Tango in Paris by Bernardo Bertolucci.

In 1978 he formed his own trio and entered into the following years, increasing opportunities as a solo pianist. Dialogues with super-ego/Es ie 1980, the first of two -dozen solo albums that arise. In the 1980s he turned more conservative post-bop forms, played in the band of Aldo Romano, as on his ECM album Opening Night of 1981. Enabled him to study the polyryhthmischen roots of jazz with local musicians, he spent 1983 more months in Central Africa. On his on the label Splasc ( h) published albums he played with accompanying musicians such as Hein van de Geyn, Aldo Romano, Enrico Rava, Miroslav Vitous and Daniel Humair ( Earthcake 1991).

In addition, D' Andrea took on with musicians such as Lee Konitz, Phil Woods and Dave Liebman Duo albums. With a quintet to Steve Lacy, he accompanied the singer Tiziana Ghigliani. He also worked with Ernst Reijseger, Slide Hampton, Max Roach, Conte Candoli, Frank Rosolino, Pepper Adams, Johnny Griffin, Jean -Luc Ponty as well as many Italian musicians.

With his regular lineup since the nineties, the Franco D' Andrea Quartet (Andrea Ayassot saxophone, Aldo Mella bass, Zeno De Rossi drums), he presented from 2005 onwards increasingly seamlessly merge into each concert evenings that run straight without a program agreement by the extensive repertoire of original compositions but also standards involve. The Italian jazz critic Vincenzo Roggero writes for example about the album " Sorapis " (2011): "Search, experimenting to make the compositions into something ever- morphing, an open space, where, although solid, clearly recognizable structures are in place, within which the four musicians move but curious and unpredictable. " Guest musicians such as Dave Douglas and Han Bennink supplement on tours 2011-12 occupation of his band. Andreas Pichler turned the 2006 documentary Franco D' Andrea - Jazz pianist about his life and work.

Work

According to Richard Cook and Brian Morton, the resulting with Roberto Gatto and Giovanni Tommaso production Airegin one of D' Andreas best albums, with interpretations from the jazz repertoire as Epistrophy, Doxy or Bill Evans ' Blue in Green, Tommaso composition My Dear One, and D ' Andreas Things Called ". 1989 was in a trio Chromatic Phrygian, to accompany her on several soundtracks 1996 solo album 3 Lines, which takes up the idea of Bill Evans on his Conversations with Myself themselves. In 2001 he took out a set of eight solo piano albums for Philology. In total, he has recorded over 200 LPs and CDs.

D' Andrea is considered senior among Italian post-bop musicians. Like the jazz publicists Arrigo Polillo and Gian Carlo Roncaglia clung, it was mainly Franco D' Andrea, who was in Italy in the sixties, seventies and eighties, together with Enrico Rava, most popular with jazz criticism. At D' Andreas models include such diverse musicians such as James P. Johnson, Monk and Tristano; other suggestions come from the work of Mingus, Miles Davis and Coltrane. His work is one of the " most unique of European jazz ," writes the well-known Italian musicologist Stefano Zenni.

D' Andrea has composed many songs. On behalf of the theater in Cagliari, he worked with the contemporary composer Luca Francesconi and African percussionists Fode Voula. D' Andrea is stylistically one of the richest European pianists and dominated much of the Jazzidiome. The Rough Guide to Jazz writes in this regard, D' Andrea had " a virtuoso musician with a mercurial technique and an uninhibited attitude towards styles and eras - from stride piano to bebop, jazz -rock ( fusion) to total abstraction " developed.

D' Andrea is didactic works for decades and holds an international master or improvisation classes ( Thelma Yellin High School of Arts / Tel Aviv, Association pour l' encouragement de la musique improvisée / Geneva). The late seventies, he was co-founder of the Jazz Academy of Siena, where he teaches today at the summer courses. In addition, he taught from 1986 to ten years in the " Centro di musica professione " of Milan. From 1993 he has held for 13 years at the Conservatory " FABonporti " Trent the Jazz Department. Since 2002 he also built the Central European Jazz Academy Merano together with Ewald Kontschieder.

Awards

In addition to various honors and awards he won since 1982, repeated in Italy the price for the best recording of the year (most recently 2012), or the title of a jazz musician of the year ( most recently in 2008 and 2013), awarded by jazz critics and the Italian trade magazine Musica Jazz. The French Academie du Jazz in Paris in January 2011 praised D' Andreas life's work with the Prix du Musicien Européen. In 2011, he also receives the honorary prize of the Italian Jazz Awards " Luca Flores ".

Disco Graphical Notes

• Modern Art Trio ( Dejavu 2008 edition of the Vedette LP of 1970)
• Dialogues with super-ego/Es Solo ( Red Records, 1980)
• No Idea of Time ( Red, 1983) with Mark Helias, Barry Altschul
• Chromatic Phrygian ( YVP Records, 1989)
• Airegin ( Red, 1991)
• Inside Cole Porter ( Red, 1996) with Lee Konitz
• Jobim ( Philology, 1997)
• Angel Eyes ( Philology, 1999) with Larry Smith
• Eleven ( Via Veneto Jazz 2000) with Steven Bernstein
• Solo 5 - Duke ( Philology, 2001) solo
• I Love You So Much It Hurts ( Winter & Winter, 2002) with Ernst Reijseger
• Creole Rhapsody: D.Ellington ( 3 CD, Philology, 2005)
• The Siena Concert ( Blue Note 2008)
• Sorapis (El Gallo Rojo, 2011)
• Traditions and Clusters (El Gallo Rojo, 2012)
• Today 's solo album (El Gallo Rojo, 2013)
• Monk and The Time Machine (El Gallo Rojo, 2014)

Publications

• 26 Compositions, Crepuscule, Milano 1982
• Enciclopedia delle Comparata scale e degli accordi ( Attilio Zanchi with ), Didactic series of Centro Professione Musica, Carisch, Milano, 1992
• Dall'Africa allo swing - la poliritmia nel linguaggio Jazz, Educational Video, Carisch, Milano, 1996
• Aree intervallari ( with Luigi Ranghino ), Volonte & Co, 2011

Lexical entries

• Martin Kunzler: Jazz Encyclopedia. Rowohlt, Reinbek 2002 / Direct Media Publ, Berlin 2005, ISBN 3-89853-018-3
• Ian Carr, Digby Fairweather & Brian Priestley: Rough Guide Jazz, Stuttgart, Metzler 2004 ( 2nd edition), ISBN 978-3-476-01892-2
• Richard Cook & Brian Morton: The Penguin Guide to Jazz on CD. 6th Edition, London, Penguin, 2002 ISBN 0-14-017949-6