Agorà
Live In Montreux

Being from the Marche region, it is a great pride for me (as well as a particularly emotional moment) to review a suggestive, fascinating, and historically prestigious album, produced by five highly talented musicians from the Ancona area. They are the creators of a unique variant of Jazz-Fusion with Mediterranean accents: the Agorà, who hold the enviable record of being the first Italian band ever to debut (in grand style) with a live album, the excellent "Live In Montreux," a valuable chronicle of a legendary concert held on July 7, 1975 during the renowned International Jazz Festival. The interesting instrumental solutions adopted and the excellent, almost perfect, recording quality (despite the time) necessitate an in-depth reexamination of the work, adequately considering the contemporary Italian "alternative" scene and the developments in the international jazz panorama of those years.

"Agorà" is a Greek term (today often used in modern Italian as an integrated loan word) that identified the central square of the ancient "poleis" of Hellas, the hub of political and commercial life of the community; it was particularly the place designated to host the general assembly of citizens, the ideal context where, within democratic regimes, individuals could have freedom of expression and propose personal suggestions to the rest of the citizenry. "Agorà" therefore also means "place of sharing and freedom," and this open and egalitarian spirit that was the foundation of the original political institution seems to be revived in the music of our band, in the creation of a fluid, well-amalgamated, and coherent sonic form, an "unicum" that appears inseparable yet is a remarkable result of multiple individual contributions by the soloists. Listening to the compositions on the album, regardless of the variety of emotional registers employed, one senses a unique feeling of a flow that runs constant, uniform, homogeneous, without poorly calibrated virtuosity or excessive harshness; the undeniable (and reasoned) preliminary planning of the pieces and their composite architecture does not diminish the emotional intensity of the music, nor the secure and consolidated empathy among the musicians. Predominant in terms of timbre (and responsible for the most significant soloist cues) are the saxophone of Ovidio Urbani, a charismatic yet not tyrannical leader, and the sharp yet agile guitar of Renato Gasparini; solo lines move over the elegant carpet of the Fender Rhodes played by Renato Bacciocchi, reminiscent of Franco D'Andrea in approach but slightly softer and more polished in timbre compared to the Perigeo pianist; the rhythm section is entrusted to the bass of Paolo Colafrancesco, capable of echoing (in philosophy but not in performance technique) certain "continuous pulsation" cadences akin to Hugh Hopper, and the drums of Mauro Mancarono. 

The five united in 1974 from the ashes of a previous local formation called "Oz Master Magnus Ltd," debuting that same year (and what a debut!) at the Festival del Proletariato Giovanile in Parco Lambro in Milan, the best showcase for the novelties of our "pop" scene; a bland and uninvolving performance, according to reports, perhaps due to the inexperience of a group that, however, proved capable of maturing quickly, hitting the stages of important events such as the Festival di Villa Pamphili in rapid succession. Within a few months, the technical quality of the proposal and the now achieved synergy among the musicians convinced the organizers of the Montreux Festival, who had heard a demo, to enlist Agorà for the 1975 edition. Already under contract with Atlantic and guided by the brilliant production of Claudio Fabi, our band performed alongside sacred monsters like Van Morrison and John McLaughlin with the Mahavishnu Orchestra (it should be noted, for the record, that the chosen location for the performance was not the famous casino of the Swiss town destroyed in the historic fire mentioned by Deep Purple in "Smoke On The Water," and where they would return from 1976 onwards, but an alternative venue). In a certain sense, and albeit with the necessary proportions, that concert was as important for the band as Woodstock was for Santana because it was the ideal springboard for a short but very significant career, and especially because the release of the related album allowed the formation of a group of loyal fans (mostly followers of the still young Jazz-Rock and a Fusion still in its embryonic stage). We can speak of Fusion ante-litteram without second thoughts, considering the caliber of the five, here immortalized over the span of an entire concert (no cuts were made, the performance was presented in full).

In a subtle crescendo of sounds and deep choral vocalizations that erupt here and there (only the saxophonist does not sing, for obvious reasons), the framework of the initial "Penetrazione" gradually takes shape, marked by Colafrancesco's persistent bass and the dialogue between drums and electric piano, while Gasparini plays the notes of his guitar one by one, with clarity and lyricism; in the second part, the solo becomes more energetic, accelerated, introducing Urbani's sax, an emulator of Coltrane but executer of inspired and original phrases, before the quick cadence that closes the piece and leads to the beginning of the first part of "Serra S, Quirico": a more sustained composition with an initial solo by Gasparini that extends to a meditated and "silent" central section, first conducted by the bass notes and then by the exposition of a new piano theme, a cue for further soloistic improvisations capable of enlivening the narrative structure of the piece until its conclusion. On the same atmospheres "Serra S. Quirico Parte Seconda" moves, only with greater presence of Bacciocchi's Fender Rhodes, author of virtuosic and complicated rapid passages interlocked between sax and guitar. "Acqua Celeste" constitutes a further exploration of the themes already introduced in the first half of the album and shines for the usual instrumental personality and group spirit revealed by our band, capable of varying register and proposing unusual and always new developments; it closes with a track, "L'Orto di Ovidio," curiously dedicated by Urbani to the lands of his native area (those familiar with certain landscapes of the Marche hinterland will have no difficulty imagining those small plots of land between one farmhouse and another, a legacy of ancient sharecropping): and it is precisely the sax that introduces in its own way this final instrumental ride, on par with the others and an ideal continuation of a conceptual design capable of embracing the entire album.

However, the reactions from certain specialized press were far from positive: the focus was on the alleged derivativeness of a proposal too indebted to the intuitions of Perigeo, Soft Machine, or Weather Report, and the group faced accusations of "scholarly coldness," within the perspective of a cumbersome and unbrilliant sound framework. They were especially opposed by the extreme wing of the Counterculture, which polemically (but not very intelligently) compared them to Area: it is well known that when, during critical analysis, politics and music are mixed, the results can be misleading, fortunately now largely reversed and no longer deserving consideration. Refined, cultured, intimate, tending towards romantic and meditative, our band has nevertheless had the merit of producing two albums (this one and the subsequent "Agorà 2," the one with "Cavalcata Solare" and "Punto Rosso") that have stood the test of time, preserving their charm unaltered and worthily attesting to the elegance of musicians then destined (especially Urbani) for a certain fortune on the contemporary Italian jazz scene.

I am biased, being their fellow countryman, but nobody can take away five stars from this album.