Between the mid-1960s and the early part of the 1970s, Rome was an artistic laboratory involving musicians and composers of experimental and haphazard electronic music, texture music and free improvisation, psychedelic, free jazz, and folk-rock. The artistic community in the Capital includes not only musicians but also the most radical figures active in the area of visual arts, literature, beat poetry, political and social theater.
As was the case with jazz musicians who arrived from overseas, exponents of the American and European avant-garde scene settled for long periods in Italy. These include multi-instrumentalist and composer Alvin Curran. In 1964 the American musician moved to Rome, where he came into contact with British composer Cornelius Cardew, an assistant in the late 1950s to Karlheinz Stockhausen, and Italian composer Franco Evangelisti.
He performed at Rome’s Beat ’72 political theater in an experimental solo performance, “a concerto for wind, glass, air, bees, water, and synthesizer,” initially recorded in the United States. He co-founded with Frederic Rzewski, who also moved to Italy in 1960, Allan Bryant and Richard Teitelbaum the expanded avant-garde and concrete music ensemble “Musica Elettronica Viva,” in which American saxophonist Steve Lacy and saxophonist Ivan Vandor, among the founders in 1948 of the Roman New Orleans Jazz Band, also play a part.
Later, between 1974 and 1975, Alvin Curran approached American minimalism to make albums of“solo performance music” entitled Songs and Views Of The Magnetic Garden and Fiori Chiari, Fiori Oscuri and collaborated with drummer Andrea Centazzo and saxophonist Maurizio Giammarco on the recording of Davanti and Oltre la Soglia (1975), one of the first recordings of ambient-jazz music in Italy.
The American musician plays synthesizer, with dark psychedelic overtones, on the track contained on the album titled“Flash On The Rock Scene.”
The previous year, Andrea Centazzo had recorded his first album entitled Ictus using a wide paraphernalia of conventional and unconventional percussion combined with electronic sounds, wide sound spaces and funk-jazz-like modulations. For his part, Maurizio Giammarco with the Suonosfera ensemble embraces the search for improvisation understood as extemporaneous composition, between contemporary and minimalist music, strongly inspired by the ensemble of American composer Philip Glass.
Without the presence of double bass in the lineup, the lineup included guitarist Tony Ackerman, saxophonist and clarinetist Gianni Nebbiosi, saxophonist Eugenio Colombo, and drummers Nicola Raffone and Michele Iannaccone.
Each member of the group contributed elements acquired during previous artistic experiences to the formation’s musical vision: Maurizio Giammarco had played in the jazz-rock group Blue Morning and collaborated with Mario Schiano and Giorgio Gaslini.
Tony Ackermann, an American guitar teacher living in Italy, came from the folk and country scene. Eugene Columbus had a rock background behind him, particularly of British origin. Nicola Raffone had taken part in projects by Giorgio Gaslini and pianist Patrizia Scascitelli.
Michele Iannaccone had collaborated with English pianist, also living in Italy, Martin Joseph and the group Nuove Forme Sonore.
The music expressed by the group, with a strong electronic connotation, reflected the contradictions of the Italian cultural and artistic scene of the time, characterized by the difficulty of ensembles and soloists with a musically unorthodox repertoire to carve out their own space in which to play freely and continuously.
Paolo Marra
Bibliographic source: Ciao2001 (July 1973), article titled “The jazz promos of tomorrow” by Dario Salvatori
