Giovanni Guidi – 100 Comizi d’Amore

Giovanni Guidi – piano

Giovanni Guidi

Born in Foligno, Italy, in 1985, Giovanni Guidi first showed interest in music at the tender age of three, when he received a toy drum set as a present. At the age of twelve, he began studying the piano. During his studies at the summer masterclasses in Siena, he began to attract the attention of Enrico Rava (he is a member of his New Quintet) who later asked him to join the group Rava Under 21, and later Rava New Generation. It was with this later incarnation that Guidi appeared on a nationally distributed bonus CD for ‘L’Espresso’ magazine. In addition to his continuous collaboration with Rava (PM Jazz Lab and Quintet), he performs in Gianluca Petrella’s Cosmic Music Orchestra, Fabrizio Sferra Trio and conducts his own groips. Guidi has performed at numerous major festivals, including Umbria Jazz, Villa Celimontana Jazz Festival, Ubi Jazz, Vicenza New Conversation, Umbria Jazz Balkanic Windows, Zurich Nu Jazz, Fandango Jazz Festival, Stavanger Mai Jazz, Vigo Jazz Festival and North Sea Jazz Festiva. At Umbria Jazz 2006, he appeared as artist in residence, performing for ten consecutive evenings in front of a very enthusiastic audience. With his quartet, consisting of three other young jazz musicians: American Dan Kinzelman on woodwinds, Stefano Senni on bass and Portuguese drummer Joao Lobo, Guidi demonstrates his talents as a pianist and composer. The quartet performs a series of Guidi’s original compositions, strongly influenced by popular music, but with very rare harmonic structures, and characterised by a deep melodic sense.In addition to these originals, the quartet performs new versions of pieces by musicians as varied as Ornette Coleman, Hampton Hawes, Radiohead and Bjork. The Giovanni Guidi Trio has released a CD for the Japanese record company VENUS. The CD ‘Tomorrow Never Knows’ received five stars in a recent ‘Swing Journal’ magazine review. In February 2007, the CD ‘Indian Summer’ was released by CAM JAZZ. Giovanni Guidi was named ‘Best New Talent’ by a jury of 58 journalists and critics in a poll entitled ‘TOP JAZZ 2007’, held annually by the Italian magazine ‘Musica Jazz’. In 2008, his album entitled ‘The House Behind This One’ was released. In July 2009, his new album ‘The Unknown Rebel Band’ was released. His third CD for CAM Jazz, marks his debut addressing a larger ensemble. The result is a disc of surprising intensity, which successfully balances moments of pronounced lyricism with influences from free jazz, a continuous source of inspiration for the young pianist from Foligno. Guidi was named best Italian pianist in 2011 by Insound magazine, and Musica Jazz’s end-of-year poll placed him in 2nd place as best pianist, just one point behind the winner. It is becoming clear that at only 27 years old, Guidi is establishing himself as one of the most important voices of the new generation in Italy and abroad. 2012 was an important year for Italian pianist Giovanni Guidi. His fourth record as leader, ‘WE DON’T LIVE ANYMORE’, was released in February by CAM JAZZ. Guidi is accompanied by some of New York’s finest musicians (Michael Blake, Thomas Morgan, Gerald Cleaver) and frequent Italian collaborator Gianluca Petrella. The quintet has performed two successful concert tours in Europe since the release. In spring, he appeared as a sideman on Roberto Cecchetto’s ‘SOFT WIND’ with Giovanni MAIER and Michele RABBIA, released on MY FAVORITE RECORDS and, in mid-September, on Enrico RAVA’s much-anticipated ECM release ‘TRIBE’, with Gianluca PETRELLA , Gabriele EVANGELISTA and Fabrizio SFERRA: the latest incarnation of Rava’s quintet, in which Guidi’s original vocals are an important distinguishing feature. He has continued to work as a sideman in various formations including trombonist Gianluca Petrella’s ‘Cosmic Band’ and Petrella’s new project ‘Il Bidone’, dedicated to the music of Nino Rota. The explosive Guidi / Petrella duo was enthusiastically received at the Euro Jazz festival in Mexico City. With Enrico Rava he appears both as a duo and in the quintet, now titled Tribe, and in the Enrico Rava PM Jazz Lab (in various projects including the recent ‘We Want Michael’ project dedicated to Michael Jackson). His ensembles as leader include his original quartet with Dan Kinzelman, Stefano Senni and Joao Lobo, the Unknown Rebel Band (with a new repertoire of African music) and the new quintet with Shane Endsley (trumpet player of Kneebody), long-time partner Dan Kinzelman and Thomas Morgan and Gerald Cleaver Guidi’s first record as leader for ECM ‘City of Broken Dreams’ with Thomas Morgan and Joao Lobo was released in March 2013.

100 Comizi d’Amore

“As Virgil was for Dante, as Gramsci was for Pier Paolo Pasolini, Pier Paolo Pasolini will be my guide. To continue to discover myself by dialoguing with a Maestro, with history, with love, with genius, with passion, with unscrupulousness, with moralism, with freedom, with the dark sides of man and with those of woman. With family, with faith, with the suburbs.Hundreds of Love rallies.One Hundred Prayers to Pier Paolo Pasolini.One Hundred Prayers a Hundred Years After His Birth Because We All Wish He Had Never Died.”

Giovanni Guidi

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