Luca Flores
For Those I Never Knew

There is in the city of the lily a square… At the edge, a basilica with one of the most beautiful facades of the Renaissance… Polychrome, with white marbles inlaid with green, it was completed in the 1400s by Leon Battista Alberti… it is so esoteric that just staring at it intensely causes bewilderment and a loss of self…

Well, here in Santa Maria Novella, there was a place called the “Salt Peanut,” a true temple of Florence's live jazz scene… Recently, ELENA STANCANELLI mentioned it in a beautiful book “FIRENZE DA PICCOLA” by Laterza Editore… which, by the way, I recommend because it’s written the way it should be… You would descend a spiral staircase and enter this cellar dedicated to the cult of musical dithyrambic rites… with the flavor of blue notes, vintage vinyl, scrappy brass, oak and well-aged chianti… of Orpheus searching for Eurydice and rickety Orphic drums… How many nights I spent amidst floods (risky in Florence) of notes and swinging nicotine cigarettes… I would like to remember all those who played there… but it's impossible!! I will suffice by mentioning AIRTO MOREIRA and the too quickly forgotten MASSIMO URBANI… Massimo was high when he played at the Peanut. But his concert was superb… How many dawns emerging from this pentagrammatic well saturated with digressions, diminished chords, pauses, taps, and sevenths… I experienced, in front of the facade illuminated by mysterious moons, syncopal phenomena that were anything but jazzy… The sublime and beauty, as IMMANUEL claimed, can indeed frighten!!! And how many times we lingered with the musicians before going to bed… Just to give you an idea of the atmosphere.

In this place, endowed with unknown and strongly magnetic energies, a true crossroads of never dormant and ever-evolving avant-gardes… the navel and cool, be-bop center of our jazz scene back then… I saw and heard, many times, an unknown at that time, LUCA FLORES… Unkempt, reserved, and quiet… one with the piano… Eyes down on the keyboard and few frills: scant spectacular concessions. I always had the sensation that he was playing for himself regardless of the audience in front of him… closed inside a microcosm made of black and white… of unresolved doubts… of compulsion for perfection, of faraway mirages to be filled with study and diligent exercise… of ambitious desires to exist and to arrive… yes, but where? (then it will be understood)… One who used the piano as therapy… It’s easy to claim, at this point, to have sensed in him an extraordinary talent and an innate predisposition for jazz…

Virtuoso and technically perfect, he had that aura of the brilliant desperate that I immediately saw on him like a karmic destiny. I followed his career, which developed with growing success… between recordings well-received by critics and among the small and increasingly larger crowd of his admirers… and then collaborations with the “GIANTS” for a career on the rise: DAVE HOLAND, LEE KONITZ, and lo and behold, CHET BAKER with whom he went on tour… I often hear it said that opposites attract… but also the similar ones in my opinion… and the symbiosis between these can be explosive. Imagine that exaggerated CHEV, borderline and toxic genius, in the tradition’s groove, in contact with the rather evident, albeit latent, despair of Luca. Boy, what ghostly flames!! Who knows if Flores absorbed Baker's nihilism during this collaboration? Predisposed subjects undergo and absorb these negative influences… it's well known… The years passed, and our star rose ever higher. He began making waves even in the USA, receiving awards and mentions from specialized magazines… and thus we arrive at 1994… I broke my friend’s soul to come to listen to this jazz musician now in the Empyrean of Afro-American music…

The stage of action moves to Piazza del Carmine where Masaccio's breath is still felt (the cycle of frescoes in the eponymous church is chilling) and the more contemporary Vasco Pratolini… SALA VANNI full… and the set of our guy and Tiziana Ghiglioni (a respectable vocalist) begins. After just two pieces, Luca blows up… gets up from the piano… gives over to Dionysian excitements… throws water on the poor Ghiglioni… and dishevels everything in front of him… And so it was that the concert was suspended! No one understood exactly what happened… and many waited… long and vainly. That was the last performance of the Tuscan pianist… The pinnacle of his unresolved existential and musical troubles… What sadness that evening!! …and who forgets it anymore! An entirely comprehensible and irreparable “the end.” A few months went by and on March 20, '95 I read in a local news snippet that a musician had hung himself from a beam in his home in Montevarchi… While writing I’m listening to his posthumous album, a true musical testament. You must, if you haven’t already, buy it… “FOR THOSE I NEVER KNEW” the title…

The first track of this CD “HOW FAR CAN YOU FLY (LADDER)”… is indeed a true swan song… By then, Luca had decided to take his own life. I have no words to describe it… to describe paradise perhaps words do exist. This composition is the musical rendition of the place where he wanted to go, tired of terrestrial transit, and where he is now… there in the realm of harmony and absence of contrasts… Music has been defined by Cioran as the unconscious memory we humans have of a lost Eden… In this case, the airy and poignant lyricism represents the premonition of the near future. Yet, the entire album is a triumph of visceral expressiveness and, paradoxically, it’s a work rich and laden with extended and strong vitality… When Walter Veltroni published his book on Luca, I was very surprised and amazed… I asked myself what he had to do with it. Reading it, I understood… I was actually happy that more and more people could, in this way, get closer and discover his music.

A film will soon be released about the short life of this great man, starring Kim Rossi Stuart… Once again we are at the usual… posthumous glory. But I’m still happy and at this point, I care much about the afterlife… Luca must be known at all costs. And whatever the cost… Meanwhile, his seeds are in the air, growing healthy and thriving… Do you know who is the best Italian pianist at this moment? STEFANO BOLLANI. Guess who was his teacher? LUCA FLORES…

Goodbye Luca and… thank you for everything!!! SIT TIBI TERRA LEVIS!!!