16 TURIN JAZZ ROCK SCHOOL Pt.1

Dear Japanese friends,

TURIN JAZZ ROCK SCHOOL is a catalogue, within the label ELECTROMANTIC MUSIC and it's a name that's been given to the unique combinations of jazz and rock musician, doing a personal identifiable jazz-rock music, from the city of Turin, in northern Italy.

In previous chapters of this blog we've seen that Turin had a well-defined jazzy tradition that in the 70's started to feel the attraction towards revolutionary rock music of that time.

We had bands like "Dedalus", "Il Sogno di Archimerde", "Living Life and obviously "arti & mestieri" that were attracted to this new fantastic area of musical expression "in the space between" jazz and rock.

Talking of "arti & mestieri" in our 33 years of activity we have been put sometimes with jazz-rock bands, sometime we have been put with progressive bands. In fact, if you listen to the band's repertoire you'll find sometimes, in tunes like "Valzer Per Domani" a precise jazzy mood, while in other like "Mirafiori" you'll find a kind of prototype of jazz-rock, and in songs like "Strips" you'll find a 100% progressive song with a classical interlude, lead by the violin in the middle of a vaguely "Crimsonian Song".

Songs like "Strips" would have never appeared in the repertoire of typical jazz-rock bands, while "Mirafiori" and "Valzer Per Domani" couldn't have appeared in the standard repertoire of a progressive band.

So "arti & mestieri" stay really "in between" the 2 styles, sometimes closer to jazz-rock, sometimes closer to prog, And I'll tell you, one of things than more then qny other gives us, "arti & mestieri", more satisfaction is when our music, more than "prog" or “Jazz rock" is defined "a la arti & emstieri".

As a new artistic adventure arti & metieri will record, later, this year 2 albums, in the meantime, this time "not being in between" but focusing each album on one of the 2 main style in which we're involved.

The progressive album will be called "Piramidi - Quadri di un'esplorazione", and it will be a long suite on the life of the "Italian Indiana Jones" based on Italian writer Marco Zatterins' book, called "Il Gigante Del Nilo". Marco Zatterin will also write the lyrics of the tune.

The other one called "Americanarti" will be a "full jazz-rock immersion"

I've done this intro with a short arti & mestieri's stylistic presentation as TURIN JAZZ ROCK SCHOOL has a lot to do with arti & mestieri, especially for what happened after arti & mestier and for what the band inspired his musicians and other musicians in the Turin area.

Beppe