Interview by Guido Gazzoli with the pianist and composer Enrico Pieranunzi which appeared in the magazine "Musica Jazz" of January 1979.
In the interview Enrico Pieranunzi talks about his journey in the Roman jazz scene that began in the high school years with some jam session with the double bass player Bruno Tommaso and the drummer Bruno Biriaco and continued, at eighteen, with the trombonist's quartet Marcello Rosa. A few years later he began collaborating with the great American musicians passing through Rome – Johnny Griffin, Kenny Clarke, Art Farmer, Sal Nistico and others – first at the “Blue Note” and later at the "Music Inn", a jazz club founded and managed by Pepito Pignatelli.
The interview also offers Pieranunzi the opportunity to dwell on his role as a teacher held, since 1975, at the Campobasso Conservatory and as artistic director of the Edipan label, recently founded by Maestro Bruno Nicolai. The collaboration was born in 1976 after the publication by the label disc of Pieranunzi in floor only by title "The Day After The Silence”. Speaking of the then situation of jazz, the Roman pianist exalts its quantitative improvement in terms of interest and diffusion among the public, to be traced back to a greater organization of concerts, festivals, as well as seminars and courses dedicated to improvisation present in the programs of music schools. But on the other hand, he points the finger at the absence of musical practice in school age, a factor, in his opinion, at the basis of a smaller number of valuable musicians in Italy compared to the United States or European countries, such as Sweden and Denmark . Beyond this consideration, Pieranunzi, while denouncing a certain xenophilia towards jazz on the part of critics and Italian institutions, affirms- “without prejudice to the "historic" debt to American musicians, in Europe we must not (we Italian jazz musicians) suffer from any complexsor inferiority.
Contribution shared by Enrico Pieraunzi
External links:
Bruno Nicolai - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Edipan Discography
