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Rating: I prefer other Italian saxophonists in terms of feeling, phrasing, and attitude; but I've never heard anyone with a pure talent like his. Had he been born in America, perhaps we would have counted him, mainly for a matter of visibility, among the giants of Jazz; but on the other hand, we would have surely lost the honest genuineness of this boy from Monte Mario. This factor, however, didn't prevent him from a musical perspective, as Massimo nonetheless managed to carve out a significant place in the history of Jazz. This is what made Massimo Urbani unique: his exceptional talent combined with his Roman emotionality.
A sincerely enthusiastic guy, a boy with lively eyes who loved Jimi Hendrix and Roma, Charlie Parker, and Bossa Nova. As a teenager, I was fascinated by the lives of famous rockstars, but over time I found something more significant, more profound, and more in line with my idea of a musician's life connected to music in the borderline stories of jazz musicians. I believe that the musical and human context of a little jazz club is anyway more interesting than that of a stadium with 80,000 people. These elements, which accompanied the troubled and exhilarating life of Massimo Urbani, have something romantic if associated with the humanity of popular and populous Rome. However, his clean and sincere spirit went hand in hand with drugs, and he was the first to encounter these dual sides of the same coin. Mauro Verrone from the book: "I believe these substances helped him to be a bit more cynical, tougher, full of himself; otherwise, he was too tender, he would get impressed. He was a person with great vulnerability." I'm not a psychologist, I don't want to give life to demonizations and even less to mere justifications; but what may appear to the eyes of common people as a usual case of drug addiction, I still see an essential nuance: the emotionality of a musician which, with the case's alterations, still manages to stand out for better and for worse from the emotionality of ordinary people. We're not talking about the musician - speaking of rockstars - loaded with money ready to lavish it on his vices, also because Massimo was very often broke.
Here we speak of a boy whose sensitivity was like a boulder, who gave his heart and his fears to music as well as to drug addiction. In the end, Massimo just wanted to feel the musical and spiritual closeness of those around him, in order to give all of himself musically and humanly. I believe that his historic metteme er feeling encapsulates and explains this desire to receive and to give. Still Mauro Varone from the book: "when he said 'm'hai messo er feeling,' others understood. There was also a group of people who did not follow him in this, but the detachment he created was completely unintentional. These little American and English words embedded in a Roman discourse resonated perfectly."
This journey of Carola De Scipio starts from afar: her brother Maurizio - who would play Massimo himself a few years later in the film "Piano, Solo" - her uncle Luciano and the neighborhood friends start to recount the early part of Massimo's life: his summers spent peacefully at his grandparents' house in Camerata Nuova, where Massimo's first contacts with music happened, also thanks to his grandfather Antonio's passion for the village band. The Monte Mario band, for instance, boasted a sizable representation of the Urbani clan. Massimo's father was a likable factotum passionate about Jazz. This climate, obviously, which also included Jeannot, a picturesque cobbler of Monte Mario and former orchestral of Fred Buscaglione, began to shape Massimo's musical sensitivity. The book will be a fantastic ride inside Massimo Urbani's life: a life made of sincere friendships, extraordinary encounters, unsustainable excesses, overwhelming passions, bitter misunderstandings. The crème of Italian Jazz leaves significant testimonies in the persons of Rava, Pieranunzi, Capiozzo, Ascolese, Gaslini, Giammarco, Bonafede, Di Castri. The words of Valentina Amadori, his last partner who gave him a splendid boy, Massimo junior, born unfortunately after the departure of his father, are very heartfelt. Their relationship gives the final key to understanding Massimo's personality: a personality with angelic and infernal nuances constantly in contrast.
An splendid gift embellishes the book: a record recorded at Larry's Club in 1988. If memory doesn't play tricks, it should be a club in Turin and bears the name of another unfortunate saxophonist, Larry Nocella. The disc opens with a Massimo original, "A Trane from the East", which symbolically brings Massimo closer to Trane as if in Michelangelo's Last Judgment there were two saxophones instead of two arms (...) Also noteworthy is a superb version of a classic dear to him, "Every Thing Happens to Me", contextually close to the version of one of his idols, Sonny Stitt. If there's musical and human passion, the book reads in one breath and in the blink of an eye.
So: around 12:00, read the book, then prepare yourself a carbonara and eat it while listening to the disc attached to the book. Massimo will live, guaranteed.
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