Cesare Dell’Anna - Tarantavirus Jazz Night (2021)

It is unlikely that people suffering from arachnophobia will be delighted with the cover of this album, even if, overcoming their disgust, they discern that the huge spider on the cover is of artificial origin. But even they cannot deny how impressive she looks. Believe me, what's underneath in this online album is no less impressive.

The Italians owe it to the poisonous spider the tarantula for the emergence of a largely improvisational - both in music and in movements - folk dance tarantella. His homeland is southern Italy, and it was once believed that dancing helps to heal the effects of a spider bite. In the south of Italy, in Apulia, on the very "heel" of the Italian boot lives also Cesare Del Anna, a trumpeter from a family of hereditary musicians for several generations. Cesare received an academic education, but is actively working both in the field of academic and improvisational music, collaborating with leading jazz musicians in Italy. He has a lot of various projects on his account, for example, Opa Cupa or GirodiBanda. Del Anna publishes many of them on the 11/8 Records label he founded in 2005. Among them are the studio albums of the Tarantavirus project. On December 21, 2012 in Lecce, Tarantavirus gave a big concert, which now, in March 2019, will appear in full before a wide range of listeners in the form of the album Tarantavirus Jazz Night.

The album takes almost two hours to play. But I am sure that you will not regret the time spent listening to it, of course, if you love modern improvisational music in the form that Tarantavirus offers: a combination of jazz in the widest range - from sophisticated avant-garde to funk - with elements of ethnic and modern academic music, and not without electronics, in moderation. That evening in Lecce, Cesare Del Anna gathered on stage almost all the color of Italian jazz, people widely known outside the Apennine Peninsula: I will name, for example, such names as trombonist Gian Luca Petrella, saxophonist Roberto Ottaviano or drummer Zeno De Rossi. Separately, it is necessary to mention a whole group of vocalists who participated in the concert: Enz Pallar, Irene Lungo, Rachelle Andriolli and Emmanuele Licci. A good half of the compositions that evening began just with vocal parts: sometimes funky (Jazz on), sometimes avant-garde (Inquinata l'acqua), but more often of an ethnic character (Damme nu ricciu, A mezzanotte, To to to), and then they picked up the baton instrumentalists, transforming the performed music into real improvisational masterpieces. The brass and keyboards were very good at this action - yes, in fact, it is difficult to single out someone separately. A real celebration of music, to which 11/8 Records now invites everyone, and not just the happy spectators of that concert in Lecce seven years ago.