Description
With this new collection, “Funky Juice” explores the world of the “jazz-manouche” guitar style, presenting some of the major representatives of the Roman scene. All the compositions are original, very suitable for cinematographic and theatrical scenes but also for themed parties and listening in company, given the animated, joyful and festive nature of the songs. The profound knowledge of the genre on the part of the artists and the careful attention to the culture of origin of the populations who invented this captivating and popular sound are the essential prerequisites for arriving at an artistic result of a high quality level. The love for boundless travel, for the magical nights spent dancing around the fires and the joy of belonging to a festive, wandering and free community, together with the cult and admiration for the great inventor father of the genre “Django”, it brings together and unites all the musicians chosen for this compilation.
Manouche jazz (also known as gipsy jazz, gipsy swing or hot club jazz) is one of the styles of jazz developed by guitarist Jean “Django” Reinhardt, of the Sinti Manouche clan, in Paris in the 1930s. That style is defined as manouche jazz lilting melodic music in which stringed instruments (guitars, basses, violins…) find their maximum expression, typical of gypsy bands. This musical genre draws its origins from the unrepeatable artistic experience of the guitarist Django Reinhardt, who is considered its creator and its greatest exponent: he made possible the union between the ancient gypsy musical tradition of the Manouches lineage and the American jazz. The fruit of this union is a genre that combines the sound and expressive creativity of the swing of the thirties with the musical trend of the French valse musette and the eclectic gypsy virtuosity. Gypsy jazz or jazz manouche continued throughout the course of the last century and still today. Among the contemporaries of the typically gypsy sphere there are: Bireli Lagrene, Angelo Debarre, Stochelo Rosenberg, Jimmy Rosenberg, Joscho Stephan and Frank Vignola.
Guitar and violin are still the main solo instruments, although clarinet, saxophone, mandolin and accordion are sometimes used. Rhythm guitar is played using a percussive technique, which essentially replaces drums. During the 1930s swing also arrived in Europe, a music that sounded very strong compared to the canons of the time and in this context the guitar could not be heard. The question was close to the heart of Mario Maccaferri, an excellent musician and luthier from Cento (Ferrara) who in 1930 developed the idea of a guitar with a powerful and ringing sound with substantial differences compared to the one everyone knew; in fact it had an internal sound box, the soundboard folded onto the bridge, the bridge not glued but resting on the top and many other improvements that would have made this instrument capable of competing with the volume of swing formations. The history of the jazz guitar, which began in New York around the 1920s with the great Eddie Lang, continued in the 1930s with two guitarists who would have a great influence on subsequent generations: Charlie Christian and Django Reinhardt.
Proud and alternative in every manifestation of life, Django could not read or write, neither music nor words. He was rarely on time for his concerts, he liked to have rolls of banknotes in his pockets, but the money went out as quickly as it came in, to pay for pleasures. The conventions of the “villagers”, as the Sinti called the settled citizens, were of no interest to Django. He was interested in living. And play.
Moreno Viglione guitarist, composer, arranger and guitar teacher, boasts almost thirty years of experience. He has played on tour and in the studio with many artists of national and international fame. In the jazz field with some of the greatest exponents of gypsy jazz, such as Angelo Debarre, Samson Schmitt, Noe Reinhardt, Dorado Schmitt and Tim Kliphuis. On tour and on TV with Patty Pravo, Mimmo Locasciulli, Giorgio Tirabassi, Mark Hanna just to name a few. He was the guitarist of the resident band of the Webnotte (la Repubblica) broadcast hosted by journalists and music critics Ernesto Assante and Gino Castaldo where he played with many artists such as Ron, Enrico Ruggeri, Raf, Paola Turci, Massimo Ranieri, Nek, J- Ax, Malika Ayane, Francesco Renga, Nina Zilli, Fausto Leali, Carmen Consoli, Fiorello, Noemi, Luca Carboni, Syria, Mario Venuti, Francesco Gabbani, Manuel Agnelli, Fedez, Chiara Galiazzo, Max Paiella, Claudio Santamaria, Irene Grandi, Rocco Hunt, Alex Britti, Toto Cutugno, Nino D’Angelo, I Ricchi e Poveri, Federico Zampaglione, Max Giusti, Patty Pravo, Paola Cortellesi, Edoardo Vianello, Raiz, Peppino Di Capri, Rossana Casale, The Gang, I Nomadi, Lorenzo Fragola , Francesca Michielin, Alberto Fortis, and many others. With Piji and Bateaumanouche he participated in Fiorello’s broadcast “Edicola Fiore” for the month of February 2016 as guitarist of the resident band. Discographically he has collaborated with many artists, including Patty Pravo, Giorgio Tirabassi and carries out some original projects including the Hot Club Roma. He has three albums under his own name, Moreno Viglione Gyspy jazz quintet, M.V. Wood and strings and M.V. Maybe Blues Trio. As a composer for cinema and TV he wrote the soundtrack for the film “The Secret Guest”, the music for the Rai Tre broadcast “Circo Massimo”, original music for Ballarò and Di Tuesday and original songs for the first season “when Patrick met Kylie” for National Geographic.
Thundermeek is: Stefano Micarelli – guitarist, composer and arranger working in jazz and music production. Founder of the nujazz-electro band Barrio Jazz Gang since 2001, together with his partner and producer, Rob Colella. In addition to collaborating with leading names on the Italian jazz scene, he has had frequent experiences with musicians from overseas, with Mike Mainieri, George Garzone, Benny Maupin, Harvie Swartz and Eddie Henderson. He has also played with some of the best Italian jazz musicians such as: Massimo Urbani, Walter Martino, Massimo Manzi, Marcello Rosa. For several years he joined the guitarist as a producer of the “Funky Juice” label with an international user base (England, Hong Kong, USA, Australia, Japan, etc.). In this double appearance he appears in his project Dynamic 4, (together with Daniele Tittarelli, Pietro Lussu and Armando Sciommeri) also released in Japan with the CD “My Favorite Beats” for the historic Columbia-Jazz label (Sony). He signed the production and composition of the song “Reflejo de luna” by Alacran, famous electro-tango: soundtrack of “Fading Gigolo” directed by John Turturro: with Woody Allen, Sharon Stone and Mira Sorvino. He also produced and played on all of Pauline London’s albums.
Nicola Puglielli was born in Rome in 1962. Guitarist and composer, always looking for new guitar and jazz frontiers. Puglielli presents a first performance of a song as a soloist already in the album “In the Middle”, produced for the first time in 1999 by the German label Jardis and recorded with his Trio. Then the German magazine Akustik Gitarre called him “a new star of jazz guitar“. His strength lies in playing with different styles and techniques, reevaluating the guitar in jazz. This allows him the luxury of walking lightly between sounds and genres. Nicola Puglielli has played with Massimo Urbani, Giovanni Tommaso, Kirk Lightsey, Steve Grossmann, Tony Scott, Philip Catherine and Walter Abt. Collaborations with the Accademia S. Cecilia Orchestra, Louis Bacalov, Nicola Piovani. He curated the “Jazz in Forte” festival in Rome as Artistic Director.
Alessandro Russo Born in Rome to a Greek mother and a Sicilian father, he began playing the guitar around the age of fifteen, his first musical experiences were in the field of rock and blues music, especially in the name of Jimi Hendrix. Around 1980 he approached jazz after discovering the music of Django Reinhardt which was fundamental to his artistic evolution. In 1985 he moved to France where he played swing and bal musette. In 1987 he returned to Italy and founded the group “Le Quintette” with Jacopo Benci, which in 1988 became Les Hot Swing, a quartet inspired by Reinhardt’s Quintette du Hot Club de France. At the beginning of the nineties, Alessandro Russo and Jacopo Benci joined Les Hot Swing with a rock group: Electric Pudding, in which they mainly played original songs by the two leaders with the participation of various instrumentalists. In 1994 he moved to Germany and after collaborating with several German musicians he joined the English group Olé together with Paul Morocco. He toured Europe and Asia for three years in the role of guitarist and actor. While continuing his activity with Les Hot Swing, in 2000 Alessandro Russo founded the Alessandro Russo Band, since 2012 ARB Trio, a group with which he began experimenting with new languages, evocative of both his musical past and his origins. In 2003 he was called to collaborate with the Boop Sisters for live performances and for the creation of their first album. In 2008 he returned to pay homage to Django Reinhardt with the acoustic quartet Scaramanouche by publishing an album of original songs.
Gabriele Giovannini approached the guitar at 13, and the Blues at 18. He enrolled at Saint Louis where he specialized in Rock-Blues guitar with Lello Panico, for whom he transcribed the teaching method “Full Optional Blues” (ed. Carish – 2005). He then graduated in 2005. He attended seminars by Robben Ford, Scott Henderson, Frank Gambale, etc. He carries out intense concert activity with various Blues, Rock-Blues, Southern Rock in Festival and Italian festival bands including Anguillara Blues Festival 2007, Organ Jazz Marathon 2008, Paliano Jazz Festival 2010, Villa Celimontana Blues Festival 2005 or in historic Blues Clubs such as the Big Mama in Rome. At the Licinio Refice Conservatory in Frosinone, where he graduated in Jazz guitar in 2009, he studied with Stefano Micarelli, Roberto Spadoni, Aldo Bassi and Nicola Puglielli, thanks to whom he approached Gipsy Jazz. And it is precisely from the newborn passion for Gipsy Jazz that various collaborations and records were born (“Gipsy Italien” – 2012 / “Spaghetti alla gitana” – 2014). He plays in many Italian clubs including Roma Jazz Festival, Atina Jazz Festival 2018, Anagni Jazz Festival 2017 , the Lanciano Traditional Jazz Festival 2015, JazzIt Fest 2015, Time in Jazz 2013 and many others. There have also been various broadcasts on the radio (Radio Rai, Radio Rock, Radio Vaticana, etc.), television/streaming (Jazz Channel, Repubblica TV, Sky TV, Netflix/Fandango etc.). He has played with important musicians on the Italian scene such as Carlos Albelo Zamora, Emanuele Urso, Florin Niculescu and Ludovic Beier.
