Born
in Naples, after beginning his career in his hometown’s dance halls Mario
Schiano pioneered free jazz in Italy at the very beginning of the Sixties, and
has been a leading figure on the Italian music scene since the beginnings of the
Gruppo Romano Free Jazz in 1966. His
musical production covers an unusually broad range, from free improvisation to
traditional Neapolitan songs, the unifying factors being his energy, inquisitive
spirit, humour and integrity. In addition he fulfilled the function of promoter
for the “cutting edge” music when no-one else would try.
After
countless concerts and festivals he founded Controindicazioni,
since 1988 the most important forum in Italy for free jazz and european
improvisation. Several generations of Italian musicians have by now benefited by
his actions and example, and he’s a founder member as well as a bona fide
instigator of the Italian Instabile
Orchestra, arguably the most important aggregation in Italian jazz today,
now reaching worldwide recognition for the whole national scene. Many foreign
visitors to Controindicazioni or members of the audiences of the Instabile
concerts all over Europe were surprised when they spotted him acting in one of
the internationally acclaimed movies by Nanni Moretti (he’s actually in a few)
or enjoyed his after-hours keyboard playing. His career includes concerts and
records with all the most important European improvisors: Misha Mengelberg, Han
Bennink, Paul Rutherford, Evan Parker, Peter Kowald, Barry Guy, Vyacheslav
Ganelin, Maarten Altena; among his early collaborators there are Bruno Tommaso
and Giancarlo Schiaffini, while later on he introduced such talents as Massimo
Urbani, Eugenio Colombo and Sebi Tramontana, to name but a few.
This book is
an essential tool to any observer interested in the development of Italian jazz
and improvised music in the last 30 years. The career of Mario Schiano is
analyzed in depth: there’s full discographical information about his 54
published records, with notes and critical comments; many unissued sessions are
described as well, and the appendices include descripition of other activities
in theatre, movies, radio and Tv, an extended bibliography, indices of tunes and
musicians. The 50 illustrations include previously unpublished photos, record
covers and concert posters.
John
Corbett’s comments, transcribed from his presentation of the book at the Controindicazioni
Festival, October 2000:
“You
say the word discography and most people's eyes glaze over and they get bored
just by the word. But this discography is much more than a discography. One of
the things that it does is that it offers a new way of thinking about the
process of writing a discography, of creating a document about somebody's own
documentation of their own work. And I think that it can point a way for of a
new kind of documentation, a new kind of discographical work that is much richer
and that involves people who don't like looking through dates and players' names
and abbreviations for instruments.
So, creative music calls for creative music scolarship.
This book is a combination of discography - a very rigorous, thorough
discography - and a filmography, a bibliography, a short insightful critical
biography as well of Mario Schiano. And last but not least, and the thing that I
think will attract people who are not at all discographically oriented, maybe
even people who don't own a CD player, is the scrapbook.
The idea is that music exists as material culture. There's a sort of
theorethical idea floating out there that music is not material , in fact that
the most important aspect of music is that it is immaterial, that it has no
material substance. But this idea of the scrapbook, this idea of a combined
overview of someone's entire output treats the material culture aspect of the
music.
So I’ll point out 3 things that are in the scrapbook that I thought
were particularly beautiful and that will make you want to run right out and buy
one so you can look for yourself:
-
Two rare Fluxus posters on page 73: very beautiful and very important to
see how the visual arts and performing arts worlds were related to the emerging
improvised music world.
-
The beatiful photograph of the performance that the Mario Schiano Trio
had opposite the Living Theatre troupe. It’s a lovely photograph, and
there’s a great picture where Mario Schiano is in the background with his
glasses on his forehead, leaning against wall; it’s a great photograph, on
page 28.
-
And the last one, speaking of beautiful photographs, I will just say look
at the heart-throb on page 47.
So the idea of music as material culture is to look and listen to the
scraps left over when - to use the often quoted Dolphy phrase “the music is in
the air, it’s gone”.
There’s someting left over, it’s not completely gone, and we’re
lucky to have someone as thoughtful, and careful as Francesco Martinelli looking
after it.”
Distribution:
Felmay srl, Strada Roncaglia 16 15040 San Germano (AL) Italy
tel. 39 - 0142 – 50577 fax 39 - 0142 – 50780
email: orders@felmay.it website:
www.felmay.it
Single copies can be bought directly from the same address, ordering
through phone, fax or website via secure server. Price for single copies is
Italian Liras 30.000/Euros 15 (15 US Dollars or 10 English Pounds) plus p&p
according to location of purchaser and shipping method.