© 2018 Leonardo Schiavone

9 November 2019 (Saturday) 8:00 pm

Pietro Ballestrero — classical guitar, Aldo Mella — double bass, Gabriele Mirabassi — clarinet (Italy)

concert

Concert Hall of the Musical Academy in Lodz ul. Żubardzka 2a

Italian guitar player Pietro Ballestrero returns to the ECK festival putting together a wonderful new trio, at its world premiere debut concert.

Gabriele Mirabassi is a highly internationally acclaimed clarinet player, one of great virtuoso musicians of his instrument worldwide. He can range with great ability from jazz to classical music, and in the last decade he developed a very deep and personal research into the music of Brazil and South America. He worked together with a large number of artists in different styles, such as Richard Galliano, Enrico Rava, Stefano Bollani, Marc Johnson, Guinga, Sergio Assad, John Cage, Mario Brunello and many others.

He was the main soloist in Pietro Ballestrero’s record KYRA, wich was presented in the 2013 edition of the ECK festival in Lodz, where the two Italian musicians joined the Bacewicz String Quartet from Poland in a strongly emotional concert.

Aldo Mella is one of the most significant and interesting jazz bass players in Italy, a stable member of the award-winning Franco D’andrea Quartet since 1996. Always active also as a leader of his own projects, as a composer and arranger, and even as a sound engineer, he recorded dozens of records, among wich the latest is the double CD UDITO, a huge work that saw the collaboration of 46 musicians and collects his best production throughout his career. Ballestrero and Mella have been working together for many years, and recently they gave a number of concerts in festivals like “Jazz Visions”, “Perinaldo Festival”, “Jazz a l’Eglise”, with the project “Animalunga trio” and in duo.

The sound of the woods of the clarinet, the classical guitar and the double bass will lead into a travel inside a world of evocative melodies, sophisticated harmonies and lively rhythms. The repertoire of the first concert of this trio will contain original compositions from each one of the three members, but also some music from their favourite composers, such as Brazilian Egberto Gismonti, or melodies coming from the popular music of South America.

© Michele Filippucci

Pietro Ballestrero

guitar player and composer, was born in 1973. He studied music since he was ten years old, taking classical and jazz classes with different teachers in Italy and abroad. His musical training took place trough many varied experiences. He followed four editions of the Siena Jazz summer courses, various workshops, such as the ones with Dave Liebman, John Abercrombie, John Stowell, and a three days master class with Ralph Towner within the Nuoro Jazz summer courses. This last experience and some lessons with brazilian guitar player Nelson Veras had a very important influence in the creation of his personal style, particularly strengthened by the choice of using mostly acoustic guitars.

Along with his musical studies he studied Mathematics in the University of Turin (Italy), where he graduated with the highest votes in 1997. Between 2003 and 2006 he participated to the “Permanent workshop of musical research” lead by Stefano Battaglia within the “Siena Jazz foundation”. In 2008 he took a diploma in Jazz Music at the Conservatory “G.Verdi” of Torino (Italy), with the highest votes.

ARTISTIC ACTIVITY
His musical activity began in 1999. He recorded five records as a leader and various other works as a sideman. He played in important festivals in Italy and abroad, such as for example “Linguaggi jazz” (Italy), “I suoni delle Dolomiti” (Italy), “ECK” (Poland), “Miasto” (Poland), “Chalon dans la rue” (France). He composed music for theatre, working together with the company “Stalker” (Italy). He made concerts together with Andrea Ayassot, Achille Succi, Alex Rolle, Marco Tardito, Furio di Castri, Gianluca Petrella, Aldo Mella, Lucia Minetti, Marco Decimo, Gabriele Mirabassi and many others. In the field of contemporary music he worked together with Ezio Bosso, Giacomo Agazzini, Claudia Ravetto, Roberta Bua, Roberto Tarenzi, Valerio Iaccio and with the ensemble “Orchestra da tre soldi”

TEACHING ACTIVITY
Pietro Ballestrero worked as a teacher in guitar and improvisation technique in the school “Centro Jazz Torino” from 1999 to 2012. From 2012 he taught in the new “Jazz school Torino” and in the civic school “Pietro Canonica” of Moncalieri (Torino). Since 2016 he is teaching in the school SFOM (Aosta) and since 2018 in the civic school “Corsi di Formazione Musicale” in Torino. He has worked in the summer musical courses in Perinaldo (IM, Italy) since 2007, teaching jazz guitar, ensemble music and improvisation techniques for classical musicians.

DISCOGRAPHY
Qfwfq, SCARABORECCHI (1999)
Pietro Ballestrero quartet, LA CASA DEGLI SPECCHI (2003)
Lucia Minetti, LUZ (2004)
Pietro Ballestrero, Francesco Saiu, LINNAS (2006)
ORCHESTRA DA TRE SOLDI (2007)
Pietro Ballestrero trio, PELLE (2008)
Marco Tardito, OISEAUX ENSEMBLE (2011)
Demo Barbieri Ballestrero & Tiberti, GARAGE (2011)
Pietro Ballestrero ensemble with Gabriele Mirabassi, KYRA (2012)
ORCHESTRA DA TRE SOLDI VOLII (2013)
Pietro Ballestrero Achille Succi, ROOTS (2016)
Lucia Minetti, Pietro Ballestrero, Stefano Profeta, JAZZ NATURE (2017)

© 2018 Daniel Chauvet

Aldo Mella

As a self-taught musician my first experiences were within the ambit of rock music during the ’70s. At the age of eighteen I was drawn closer to jazz and dedicated myself to studying the double bass. This was also the start of an intensive concert period, as well as a period of in-depth collaboration with Italian and foreign musicians.

The 1980’s and 1990’s were periods of extremely varied and intense experiences, which led to my personal growth as an artist (AREA 2 — MILESTONES QUARTET with FLAVIO BOLTRO etc.).

During this period, over and above significant activity as a double bass player, my passion for composing music also developed in projects like XAXEXO FUNK - MELLA & ALLIONE, QUARTETTO — JOKO VOCALE CONCORDE and in 1994 I formed L’ARCHETIPORCHESTRA: a Big band that included the best jazz exponents from Turin. The Orchestra cut its first CD in 1995 for OFR and received many favourable reviews in specialized magazines in America. In 1997, my introduction to the pianist FRANCO D’ANDREA led to the formation of a new quartet with ANDREA AYASSOT (saxophone) and ALEX ROLLE (drums). While I was a member of this quartet I took part in numerous festivals and shows (which included shows in AUSTRALIA and SLOVENIA) and I cut 9CDs (*see DISCOGRAPHY). At present, in addition to being an active musician I am a sound engineer with my own recording studio (ACOUSTIC SOUND).

COLLABORATIONS
Robin Keniatta, Lou Blackbourn, Adam Makovitz ,Gene Bertoncini, Gary Bartz, Charles Tolliver, Jimmy Owens, Lee Konitz, Martin Dietrich, Ricky Lawson, Bruce Forman, Jack Walrath, Peggy Stern, Manhu’ Roche, Franco D’Andrea, Massimo Urbani, Flavio Boltro,Stefano di Battista, Guido Manusardi, Giulio Capiozzo, Luigi Bonafede, Antonio Farao, Eric Legnini, Emanuele Cisi, Antonio Marangolo, Ellade Bandini, Andrea Allione, Giorgio Licalzi, Francesca Oliveri, Fabio Concato, Rossana Casale, Nelson Veras, Stefano Cantini, Stefano Bollani, Carl Anderson, David Liebman, Charlie Mariano, Stanley Jordan, Kenwood Dennard, Chico Chagas, Steven Berstein, Rudi Migliardi, John Etheridge, Dave Douglas, George Garzone, Marco Tindiglia, Marco Pereira, Dan Sulzmann, Nikki Iles.

FESTIVAL AND CONCERTS
Manly Festival e Barossa Valley Music Festival in Australia, Zagabria, Spagna, Nyon, Umbria Jazz,Venafro Jazz Meeting, Iseo, Festival della Canzone d’Autore di Recanati, Premio Tenco, Atina Jazz, Festival Citta di Nuoro, Sanremo Blues, Verona Jazz, Siena Jazz, Musicum Concentrum, LaPalma (Roma), Basement(Sidney), Bilboque(Parigi), Nis (Serbia), Satchmov (Slovenia), Capolinea (Milano), Music Inn, Big Mama e Alexander Platz (Roma), Teatro Petruzzelli(Bari), Teatro Olimpico(Roma), Teatro Verdi(Firenze), Festival di Ravello, Conservatorio G.Verdi, Auditorium Rai(Torino), Casa del Jazz (Roma), Teatro Metastasio di Prato, Casa delJazz( Roma,), Java jazz Festival, Crossroads+vari festival:Chiasso, Bergamo,Avigliana, Nuoro, Piacenza, Firenze, Kaliningrad (Russia), Umbria Jazz (4 edizioni), Umbria Jazz Winter, Auditorium Parco della Musica...e tutti i piu importanti Clubs italiani.

Gabriele Mirabassi

He is one of the best prestigious clarinettist at international level. After his graduation with honour, for some years he had taken a great interest in technical skills, peculiar of contemporary music. His involvement with jazz went side by side with his interest in contemporary music, and continued to grow after the recording of Coloriage (1991) in duo with the accordionist Richard Galliano becoming his exclusive activity.

In duo with Stefano Battaglia he records Fiabe, with Sergio Assad Velho Retrato and he signs Cambaluc, where the Quartet of clarinet namaste joins special guests such as Richard Galliano, Riccardo Tesi and his brother Giovanni Mirabassi.

He was awarded at Top Jazz ’96 as “best new talent”.
In Umbria Jazz 2000 he presents together with Luciano Biondini, Michel Godard and Francesco D’Auria, the project Lo Stortino with so many plaudits from critics and public, in Italy and abroad. In this project there is a particular care to the various composed architectures which come from the popular tradition and from the European cultured music. This particular care has created the basis for the aim of research that has animated and personalized all the next works.

His cd Um a Zero with Luciano Biondini (accordion), Michel Godard (tuba) and Patrick Vaillant (mandolin) was presented in Umbria Jazz 2001 and has been appreciated by the public and the critics in Italy and abroad, a project entirely dedicated to the Chôro, the antecedent of the great Brasilian folk music. A new recording printed by ENJA records sums up the clarinet-player’s various musical experiences, Latakia Blend, in trio with Michel Godard and Luciano Biondini, “fellow-travellers” of his last projects.
In Umbria Jazz 2003 has been presented his cd Fuori le Mura (Egea) in duo with Luciano Biondini.

At Umbria Jazz 2004 he has presented Graffiando Vento (Egea), his first cd with the extraordinary Brazilian guitarist Guinga, defined in the same year from the Folha de Sao Paulo “the best album of Brazilian instrumental music of the year”.

His collaborations are so many and extremely heterogeneous concerning the style level and languages too. Only to mention some, in jazz he worked with Richard Galliano, Enrico Rava, Enrico Pieranunzi, Marc Johnson, John Taylor, Steve Swallow, Stefano Battaglia, Roberto Gatto, Rabih Abu Khalil, Edmar Castaneda. In Brasil: Guinga, André Mehmari, Monica Salmaso, Sergio Assad, Trio Madeira Brasil, Orquestra a Base de Sopro di Curitiba. In classical music: John Cage, Mario Brunello, Andrea Lucchesini, Marco Rizzi, Orchestra Filarmonica Marchigiana, Istituzione Sinfonica Abruzzese, Orchestra d’Archi italiana, Banda Sinfonica do Estado de Sao Paoulo, Ensemble Conductus, Orchestra Bruno Maderna and many others. And in other fields (theatre, songwriting, ballet): Gianmaria Testa, Erri De Luca, Ivano Fossati, Sergio Cammariere, Mina, Giorgio Rossi, David Riondino, Marco Paolini etc.

The record “Canto d’ebano”, released on March 2008, is an homage to the extraordinary African wood and to the passionate hands (the Italian ones) that transform it in a clarinet.
On 2008, “Canto di ebano” has been awarded at Top Jazz ’08 as “best album of the year”.

In the last decade Mirabassi has been working with the brazilian guitars players Guinga and Roberto Taufic (with whom he shares the project Um Brasil diferente), brazilian pianist André Mehmari (with whom he recorded Miramari), with Andrea Lucchesini, Richard Galliano, Enrico Pieranunzi. In trio with Nando Di Modugno e Pierluigi Balducci (Gli amori sospesi e Scanzonati —  with special guest David Riondino), and in trio with Roberto Taufic and Cristina Renzetti (in the project Correnteza).