Bruno Lauzi
Nostaljazz

Bruno Lauzi is a great songwriter and a wonderful performer. And in both roles, he was significantly underestimated for a very long time. There could be many reasons: from his certainly not sculpted physique to not being politically aligned (today it's funny, once it wasn't) to maybe even others that this is neither the time nor the place to investigate. The fact is that his incredible vocal abilities and his excellent songwriting have been forcibly relegated for too many years to an audience of songcraft philologists or jazz enthusiasts. Yes, because in Bruno, as in Tenco and Paoli, even in the essence of pure songwriting, there is that taste that only jazz has, both in the voice's delivery and in tackling harmonies and themes, and in a broad sense in understanding the wide concept of singer-songwriter music.

In this wonderful, small yet grand album from 2003, Lauzi gives us more than one lesson. First of all, he gives us a great human lesson, which is the lesson of a man fighting against illness with the powerful weapons of Will and Art (read the letter to Parkinson on the official website and you'll understand). Then - and for us, here, it is more important - he gives us a great musical lesson. The album is, for the protagonists and the themes addressed, a summary of the so-called historical Italian jazz. That is, jazz that is certainly colonized, certainly in ecstasy and awe in front of the great Americans, but never vulgar or embarrassing. In short: never pathetic. A pianist, to be clear, like Renato Sellani (present - indeed! - on the album) may have had all the schooling we want (and that should be debated at length...) but that does not detract from the fact that his pianism is perfect, elegant, imaginative, and never banal. Then there's Gianni Basso... and the same discussion applies. Then there's him, Bruno Lauzi, for whose voice in the sixties Lucio Battisti and Paolo Conte would go to great lengths to give him unreleased tracks that would immediately become great classics. There is that melancholic and amused voice, perfectly pitched and deeply jazz, in the broadest and most beautiful possible sense. The tracks are some of the great classics of American song (from When I Fall In Love to Sweet Lorraine, from The Nearness Of You to As Time Goes By) plus two unreleased tracks by the Piedmontese/Genoese songwriter, namely La Nostalgia and Nell’estate del ’66, pleasantly swinging, excellently written and perfectly integrated into the whole, proving, if needed, that Our Author is an excellent Author, as well as one of the best interpreters that great Italian song has had the luck to have.

Analyzing each individual track is pointless: all are at the same, very high, level. All well played, well sung, well lived. The chemistry is remarkable, as if the protagonists had done nothing but play together for the last forty years (and for some, indeed, that's the case...). The album is, of course, from a small and courageous label (Blue Tower), and, even more naturally, it is quite a struggle to find. But, trust me, it is beautiful. And for many reasons, it must be bought, lived, and listened to. Just like Per Bruno Lauzi by Renato Sellani, another splendid, more recent album. But that is another review. Which will come, of course.