Luca Crispino - Diffrazioni (2024)

Produced by Dodicilune, distributed in Italy and abroad by Ird and in the main online stores by Believe, Diffrazioni by Luca Crispino will be released on Tuesday 28 May . In the nine tracks of the recording project - eight original songs and the reinterpretation of "Danza del Cerchio" by the Hungarian musician Béla Bartók - the guitarist and composer from Padua is joined by Federico Zoccatelli (soprano/alto sax), Stefano Benini (flute, bass flute, didgeridoo), Riccardo Ferfoglia (electric bass), Luigi Sabelli (drums). The quintet uses improvisation as one of its great common threads. Improvisation not only for the two pieces of pure creativity captured live "in one go" during the recording sessions, but also because every composition written by Crispino is born from extemporaneous ideas that arose on the spot and then fixed on the staff. This is a practice that may bring to mind jazz for many, a language that actually unites all the musicians in the group to varying degrees. In reality, however, we would risk doing this work a disservice if we stopped here. If you listen carefully, music is not easily categorised, even if the references are innumerable (everyone will find various ones to their liking) and perhaps it is also in this attempt to overcome the sense of limits, of fences, of too narrow definitions that can be interpreted the suite form of the album, in which each song leads or, rather, falls, in some way and irremediably, into the next one. Almost a single sound course at the origin of which there is an absolute value of music, conceived as an intimate expression, born from listening, meetings and personal experiences and not as an adaptation to pre-established models, obligatory styles and practices or the conditioning of paradigms declined on “sacred” musical grammars.

Guitarist and composer from Padua, Luca Crispino approached jazz in 1997 coming from rock, blues and prog experiences. In this period he has the opportunity to participate in some interesting genre fusion projects, increasingly cultivating his attention towards the study, practice and nature of musical improvisation. Since 2000 he has been practicing the artistic profession, performing live in various groups and participating in important national music festivals and festivals. From the same year he began to dedicate himself to teaching and studying experimental music. In 2013 he moved to Verona where he is among the creators of the Modern Musical Training Center ArtIngenu. He actively collaborates with various artists and ensembles, working in record productions and live performances. To date Luca Crispino alternates his activity as a musician, both on stage and in the studio, with teaching and musical research. “Diffrazioni” is his fourth participation in an album published by Dodicilune after “Kobayashi” with Roberto Lancia, Fabio Basile and Luigi Sabelli (2023), “Le Quattro Verità” with Danilo Gallo, Luca Pighi and Roberto Zorzi (2022) and “ Pequod” with the Terreni Kappa project with Francesco Caliari, Fabio Basile and Luca Pighi (2021).

Federico Zoccatelli studies clarinet with Ezio Resmini in the Dossobuono band and saxophone with Beppe Castellani, Francesco Bearzatti, Robert Bonisolo, Mauro Negri. He attends Barry Harris' jazz workshops and various ensemble music courses with Renato Chicco, Salvatore Maiore, Oscar Zenari. He participates in the jazz seminar in Sant'Elpidio a Mare with teachers from Berklee in Boston and in the Jazz workshop in Bassano del Grappa with teachers from the New School in New York. He studies classical piano with maestro Gianluca Brigo. He plays the saxophone with his quartet, the Federico Zoccatelli 4et, proposing jazz music projects, in particular he produced a tribute to Sonny Rollins which has also been transformed into an EP. He participates in projects in various formations proposing songs of bossanova and popular Brazilian music. He played in “Sax4sale”, a saxophone quartet. He delves into oriental and ethnic atmospheres in the group “Lucyan and the orientations”. He plays in the “Verona Improvisers Jazz Orchestra” which has published a live CD on the compositions of Carla Bley and Maria Schneider and a CD for Caligula “And if tomorrow were jazz. The Carlo Alberto Rossi songbook”. The group participated in several jazz festivals in northern Italy with original arrangements of songs taken from Broadway musicals and with a project dedicated to revisiting the songs played at Woodstock. He founded "Planet Groove", a funky group with a repertoire ranging from James Brown to John Scofield. From 1999 to 2009 he taught saxophone and clarinet at the S. Giovanni Lupatoto musical training center and from 2003 to 2005 he taught sax at the Artes music academy in Verona. Since 2009 he has been a teacher at the lower secondary school . He plays the sax and coordinates the arrangements for Marco Giacomozzi's album "I giorni delle lucciole".

Stefano Benini graduated in flute at the Turin Conservatory. After graduating he dedicated himself to jazz music and the study of the flute outside the classical canons. He has participated in numerous festivals and exhibitions playing with some of the most prestigious names in foreign and Italian jazz such as: Sam Most, Lee Konitz, Lawrence "Butch" Morris, Ruud Brink, JADeane, Zeena Parkins, Myra Melford, Bill Horvitz, Nin Le Quan , Larry Nocella, Peter Guidi, Nicola Stilo, Gianni Basso, Paolo Birro, Bruno Marini, Andrea Pozza, Marcello Tonolo, Gianni Coscia, Antonello Salis, Daniele Di Bonaventura, Garrison Fewell, Nino De Rose, Duilio Del Prete, … and many others . He has obtained numerous awards locally and in Italy. TOP JAZZ as best Italian jazz flautist in the years 2010\2015\2018. He has collaborated for years with the specialized magazine Falaut where he writes a column on the jazz flute. He has numerous publications to his credit. Italian and foreign critics have expressed themselves in a favorable manner several times. His discography is varied both as a leader and as a co-leader.

Riccardo Ferfoglia, from Verona, completed his studies in Philosophy and Musical Aesthetics at the University of Bologna. He played as a bassist and guitarist in various blues and progressive rock bands. He has long collaborated with musicians in the jazz field, favoring creative and original situations.

Luigi Sabelli , born in Verona in 1966, began playing the drums influenced by the passion of his father, an amateur double bass player, ending up listening to dozens of records every day and playing with various jazz and rock groups since his adolescence. Since the end of the Seventies he has studied drums with various masters, including Giorgio Salgarelli, Alberto Olivieri and Enrico Lucchini in the rooms above the "Capolinea" club in Milan from 1986 to 1987. Among the groups in which he has taken part in the last thirty years he recorded and played live with Francesco Baracca Pilota, Ottavio Giacopuzzi's Kakikiwi, i Vigliacchi del jazz, Andrea Dudine Trio, Holy Fathers, Peluqueria Hernandez. Between the Eighties and Nineties he played occasionally with Mauro Ottolini, Bruno De Filippi, Bruno Marini and Francesco Bearzatti. Passionate about jazz and "non-conforming" music, he writes for Musica Jazz and All About Jazz, for the newspapers L'Arena di Verona and Il Nuovo newspaper di Bergamo and sporadically for World Music Magazine. In 2004 and 2005 he hosted two weekly cycles of the program “Fuochi” on Radio 3.