17. TURIN JAZZ ROCK SCHOOL pt. 2

Dear Japanese friends,

TURIN has had an artistic and also a jazzy Tradition.

In the early 70's several bands were born in Turin, attracted by this space "between" rock and jazz.

arti & mestieri have been the most important band in this sense and from them, from them we saw the appearance of new bands, following this path.

Turin has always had the character of a city full of contrasts, sometimes big contrasts, as the simple fact of being at the same time a city with a long artistic tradition, and, in last century by being the first in Italy to open his heart to cinema, radio, TV at the same time being FIAT's home.

I'm telling this preface as TURIN JAZZ ROCK SCHOOL captured these contrasts, emphasizing its dynamic value and extracting his artistic colours, quite deep, indeed.

Turin is not a relaxed City and the tensions on the city have found an artistic counterpart, an artistic mirror in Turin' jazz rock.

So in the Seventies we had Venegoni & co, who recorded from Cramps, as you know, two albums like "Rumore Rosso" and "Sarabanda" and Esagono, who was the first Italian band to have its own label, MU, with its LP, "Vicolo".

In the eighties, in Turin, as all over the world, we saw the directions of the Sixties and seventies, how could we say? ...in "pause" for a while.

The 80's have surely been interesting for the music these years produced, but at the same time the 60 & 70's movement these 2 decades, in a certain sense found a kind of "limbo", os suspension in time.

arti & mestieri changed their style or, it's better to say, Furio put together a really qualified ensemble of musicians, from the jazz and rock area, They played a lot, in Italy and in France too, doing two albums like "Acquario" and "Children's Blues" that, closer to 80's fusion style, are a very effective representation of the quality of artistic meeting between jazz and rock.

In the 90's we saw the appearance of "Chirico Camarca Project", with Furio Chirico, Giulio Camarca (who played iwth Giants of jazz Lice Chet baker, as you can see in the Chapter on Turin on arti & mestieri "33", and in the seventies he was in band called "Gialma 3" which had definitely many components in the middle areas of jazz and rock).

On "Chirico Camarca project" we see also Massimo Camarca, that's with Esagono in Tokyo, next week (a further example of the INTERCHANGE OF MUSICIANS BETWEEN BANDS" one of the main character of TJRS.

Massimo Camarca is a well-known bassist in Italy, that almost every week plays on national TV, on RAI 1, the main channel.

In the 90’s I made a very important album, in my career, "Kings Of Clubs", that gave me a lot of satisfactions; it's an instrumental album focusing on the Hammond organ.

In it I had the pleasure of having, as guests, some excellent musician, in the Turin area, coming from jazz, rock, blues world. Now it's out of print but it will be reprinted very soon when my new Hammond base album, "Soulful Traffic" will be out.