adEIdJ – Associazione delle Etichette Indipendenti di Jazz

Fabrizio Zampa

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English

Would you like to meet all the stars of the golden age of American jazz, the musical, theatre and cinema? This might sound like an almost impossibly complicated undertaking, and at the very least you would have to put together a collage of films, videos, records, shows and maybe even your grandparents’ memories to come anywhere close to realising it. But never fear! If you want to rediscover and enjoy these rarefied moods from another time Francesca Biagi has already done it for you in this album entitled Frances’ Follies. The ex-leader and vocalist of Boop Sisters is passionately keen on good old-fashioned American swing and for over a year she has worked in Italy and the United States in order to realise a project that pays homage to the theatre, jazz and cinema of the USA and that is dedicated to the careers of many famous stars, such as Ella Fitzgerald, Judy Garland, Lena Horne, Fred Astaire, Fanny Brice and Ruth Etting, featuring marvellous songs by Irving Berlin, Cole Porter, Kalmar & Ruby and other great composers. The exceptional thing is that Francesca has also carefully studied the styles and the flavours of the shows and performances of the period, with an attitude that is not at all nostalgic, but that expresses her genuine passion for the words and the notes that have always been a necessary part of the history of all truly great music. With a fully-equipped band (featuring the bandleader and banjo player Lino Patruno as special guest) Biagi offers us an encounter with swing that brings together some of the most famous songs that first appeared on Broadway, in vaudeville shows, in the Ziegfeld Follies of the ‘20s and ‘30s, as well as in dozens of movies that have made motion picture history, and she always does this in a spirit of respect for the specific elements that recreate the particular atmospheres of the time. She has conducted in-depth research for months, not only in the field of music, in order to find the right clothes and period details for her live performances, and she has even managed to uncover (for the photos that illustrate her site and the posters for the concerts) a period microphone with the transducer element suspended upon radial elastic threads inside a metal ring. It looks like it might have been invented by someone like Guglielmo Marconi, but it still works a treat for the singer and it certainly looks great. So put this CD on your stereo and close your eyes. You will hardly believe your ears that in this present period of constant change, confusion and superficiality something so elegant could possibly be created!