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Rating: In a sunlit Piazza del Campo in Siena, not yet invaded by American tourists, those sitting all around, in a radial pattern, highlighted its natural soundbox-like aspect, I attended one of the most pleasant concerts of early summer. In the Podestà courtyard this past June 19, three groups performed, one after the other, forming the New York University Jazz Quartet and Quintet. The event was hosted by the Siena Jazz Foundation and was free, demonstrating the desire to bring people closer to a genre too often classified as niche, without considering its popular origins. These were the most talented students from the college with their respective teachers, it seemed the lineup was constructed in a crescendo, meaning from the first, very talented quartet, moving to the second and then to the third, reaching a maximum level of excellence.
The space, which seems to be an instrument in itself, with that tower that opens steeply towards the sky, is designed to enhance voices and sounds and quickly fills with curious onlookers and friends who have come from afar. Taking the stage is George Garzone on tenor saxophone. He comes from Massachusetts and teaches at the Berklee School of Music, in addition to NYU. He performs standards, but also his own pieces, together with colleagues on trumpet, alto saxophone, and percussion. First discipline with some Miles Davis pieces reinterpreted in a more accelerated version, with the sax emerging powerful and turning sweet at the end. Improvisation and method, always in balance, you let yourself go but the situation remains under control.
Who instead engages the audience with introductions and comments and then with music is the other teacher, Jean-Michel Pilc, on piano, together with two very young, talented saxophonists, perhaps the most applauded of all. Like an endless session, a single piece at the beginning, prolonged to infinity, Pilc’s fingers are aggressive on the keys, the cascade of notes comes out powerful and sweeps everything away, people get carried away and clap their hands, the piece remains open to continuous improvisations, the two saxophones engage in a virtuoso contest within the concert, and musical certainties no longer exist, unsettled and reinvented into new solutions, according to the jazz stylistic code.
The third band, a quintet, seals what had been heard before. On stage Dave Schroeder, who prefers to delight the audience with a soft, slow start, only the tenor sax filling the air. The companions join in later, when the atmosphere is already heated. Only then does the performance take off, the electric bass and guitar become more gritty and blend with the drums with those rising polyrhythms that envelop the small concert area. Syncopated sounds followed by more vigorous explosions of notes, refined interludes, and then starting again with the sax pedal-to-the-metal to enthuse the audience.
I saw while scrolling through the calendar that Claudio Fasoli and Furio Di Castri will come at the end of July. Not to be missed.
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