adEIdJ – Associazione delle Etichette Indipendenti di Jazz

Press Release

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A musician working in avant–garde jazz and experimental rock, Alberto Zanini improved his gypsy technique in France about ten years ago. Who would have thought it? And yet, come to think of it, the improvisation of the great manouche guitarists, Django Reinhardt in the first place, resemble stories, they are not just proofs of musical virtuosity. The guitarist from Bergamo improved his skills at the Milan Conservatory with Bebo Ferra and Massimo Colombo. In such a melting pot of influences his attitude to musical storytelling arose. He worked in the theater industry and recorded soundtracks for silent movies, especially short ones. We can’t forget his recent collaborations with Graziano Gatti, Andrea Ferrari, Francesco Chiapperini and, above all, Roger Rota, as well as his experience as leader of a trio completed by Danilo Gallo and Filippo Sala, of which only the 2017 album «Empty Yellow Thoughts» remains. The «Thinking Sketches» project was created to tell through sounds a story by Giuseppe Goisis, «Alfor, una vita a caso» – you can read about it in the thick album booklet – whose main character constantly keeps a balance between chance and rational choices. An ordinary man, a hero for a day, like David Bowie sings in Heroes, a song here interpreted with a much personal arrangement. Sketches are melodic fragments, rhythmic cells that come and go throughout the entire album and mold it between chance, improvisation and shape. The guitar and electronics of Zanini, the author of the fourteen other songs, find sensitive and fitting partners in Gabriele Rubino, clarinets, Marco Lorenzi, viola, Leonardo Gatti, cello, and Luca Mazzola, drums. The first track is a clear example, a sort of first page of notes. From each one of these fragments the other songs of the album are created in a process which is a play of alteration of the various musical parameters: tempo, pitch, intervals, dynamic and tone.

Track List

01) Sketches
02) 1967
03) The Boots Are Not in the Cellar
04) Three Dead Kittens
05) He Has Never Been Spoiled
06) Talking Sketches
07) Bricks Fall
08) Are Happy Season
09) Bodies Like Rag Dolls
10) You’re not a Real Man
11) Horse Poop Dreams
12) Horse Poop Reminds
13) Memory’s Sketches
14) Old Healthy Habits
15) Heroes (David Bowie)

All tunes, except where indicated, are composed by Alberto Zanini. ll arrangements by Alberto Zanini.

Personnel

Gabriele Rubino (clarinets)
Marco Lorenzi (viola)
Leonardo Gatti (cello)
Alberto Zanini (electric guitar, electronics)
Luca Mazzola (drums)

Recording Data