“More Than You Now” – 2 CDs (Gleam Records) – For nearly twenty years, from the early 1980s to the late 1990s, Europe experienced a period as a true jazz capital.
Alongside the intense activity of the Louisiana Jazz Club, open since 1964 and focused on the more traditional side of jazz, starting in 1979, two young enthusiasts turned organizers, Lino Zero and Marco Travagli, developed a festival hosted inside Villa Imperiale in the San Fruttuoso neighborhood. Within a few years, this event would bring the most prominent names in the global avant-garde jazz scene to the city.
The Ellington Club hosted the festival in the park of Villa Imperiale until 1992, offering concerts to enthusiasts by Dexter Gordon, Art Pepper, Art Blakey, Chick Corea, Paul Bley, Keith Jarrett, Horace Silver, Joe Henderson, Elvin Jones, and Ron Carter, John McLaughlin, Pat Metheny, Dave Liebman, Tim Berne, Gary Burton, Dave Holland, John Scofield, Michel Petrucciani, Jan Garbarek, Joshua Redman, and Geri Allen, John Surman, Jan Garbarek, Mike Stern, Miroslav Vitous, and Brad Meldhau, as well as many Italian jazz musicians, including Enrico Rava, Franco D’Andrea, Gianluigi Trovesi, Roberto Gatto, Flavio Boltro, and Furio Di Castri.
For a brief interlude, starting in 1987, the Ellington offered concerts in a small neighborhood venue (where I remember hearing, among others, John Surman, Paul Bley, and Jim Hall). It then moved to the Porto Antico in 1994, with a stint at the Teatro dei Parchi in Nervi, and then to the Teatro Modena until 2006.
The importance of the Ellington Club’s work in popularizing jazz worldwide is evidenced by the fact that some concerts, in addition to remaining in the hearts and memories of many enthusiasts, have been immortalized on record. The most famous is Joe Henderson’s album “An Evening With Joe Henderson, Charlie Haden, Al Foster” (Red Records), recorded during the 1987 edition of the Festival, which reached third place in the 1988 Down Beat charts. It was later released on CD and, a few years ago, reissued in its entirety as a 2-CD set.
The long, but necessary, preamble to announce that a new concert recorded at Villa Imperiale, exactly the day before Konitz’s, has just been released on disc.
It features the Dexter Gordon Quartet with Kirk Lightsey on piano, David Eubanks on bass, and Eddie Gladden on drums, featured on the double CD “More Than You Know,” released by the Apulian label Gleam Records thanks to an agreement with Gordon’s widow, Maxine, and Woody Shaw’s nephew, President and CEO of the foundation dedicated to the work of the famous saxophonist.
The restoration and mastering were carried out at Sorriso Studios in Bari with sound engineer Tommy Cavalieri and the artistic direction of Angelo Mastronardi, pianist and owner of the label.
The quartet on stage that evening relied on the solid and proven partnership between Gordon and Lightsey, who had met in Stockholm in the early 1970s and subsequently replaced George Cables in the saxophonist’s group for five years.
Gordon, who had returned to the US from European exile a few years earlier, would soon experience a new moment of fame with his performance in Bertrand Tavernier’s film “Round Midnight.” He returned to Europe two years after a concert at the Teatro Margherita, which ended with great success, despite the high alcohol levels.
The repertoire for the evening at Villa Imperiale unfolded across four very extensive compositions, highlighting the gentle power of the saxophone, the dynamism and versatile expressiveness of the piano, and a rock-solid rhythm section.
We begin with the romance and rhythmic alternation of “It’s You Or No One,” a familiar number from Gordon’s era, followed by Randy Weston’s “HiFly,” a theme reflecting soul and blues nuances, with Lightsley’s piano in fine form, the protagonist of lightning-fast rhythmic turns inspired by improvisation, and an eloquent solo by Eubanks.
The first CD ends here, with about half an hour of music. The second disc offers the original “Backstairs,” an immersion in twenty-eight minutes of unstinting swing, with the first half of the song occupied, in sequence, by continuous variations on the theme played by Gordon’s sax and a wild Lightsley; the remainder is devoted almost entirely to a daring drum solo with which Gladden proves himself a worthy successor to Max Roach and Art Blackey.
Then came the introductions of the musicians, preceded by Gordon’s booming voice, which began with a “millegrazi,” and finally the album’s title track, “More Than You Know,” a 1930s standard that Gordon transformed into a ballad, sending the melody straight to the listener’s heart with that simultaneously peremptory and fragile voice, for nearly ten uninterrupted minutes.
One of the most touching moments of the concert and the album, rounded out by a piano solo on the same wavelength, and followed, after the group reprise, by a solo improvisation by Gordon.
To reconstruct the atmosphere surrounding that performance, we tracked down one of the organizers, Lino Zero, who still sits front and center when the (rare) worthwhile concerts come to Europe, to draw on the treasure trove of personal memories he shared with us with such openness and kindness. I remember that at that concert, as well as at all the others at that 1981 festival, Jazz Music Director Arrigo Polillo, Honorary President of the Ellington Club, was also present. He wrote about it in the October 1981 issue of the magazine with these words: “Dexter was great. He’s always been a formidable tenor saxophonist, albeit subject to ups and downs (depending on the amount of alcohol he consumed on various occasions), but in Europe he was fantastic; very simple, swinging, and communicative.
Even moving. Evidently, he benefited from his renewed contact with American jazz musicians after his return home after a very long stay in Europe.”
Gordon with Lino Zero
Then a couple of amusing anecdotes: “There was the problem with the hotel bed, which was a bit too short for his height.
It must be said, however, that we raised the issue, but he, being the gentleman he was, didn’t even mention it. Another thing that caused a bit of confusion was that the concerts were held in a villa that housed a nursery. Given the good relationship we had with the management, we had taken advantage of the opportunity to use the building as dressing rooms.
Too bad, at a certain point, Dexter decided to light a joint inside: all hell broke loose. The institutional representatives were immediately alarmed, but even then, Dexter moved outside without raising the slightest opposition.” Finally, the most emblematic episode, with Gordon’s sax louder than… the police.
There were two concerts scheduled that evening, the first with Woody Shaw’s band and the second with Dexter. The first concert went on much longer than expected, so Dexter played late. This prompted the neighborhood to call the local police to stop the music.
The police, unable to ignore the residents’ requests, arrived on the scene but, finding an audience standing near the stage and completely delirious with the music, had no choice but to return the way they had come.
Not before asking me to stop the concert; I pointed out that I wasn’t capable of doing so and that they could use their authority to do so. Fortunately, they understood the situation and left without batting an eyelid.
Gordon and Arrigo Polillo
