Paris and the Dolomites

In many ways I didn't quite know what to expect from this gig.  It was a last minute thing, given we had arranged a dinner but then Andrew an Collette attend jazz so they were amenable changed plans for an early dinner and a guitarist at Smiths.  And James had some impressive CDs with Federico so was promoting the gig.  Even the room was new.  This was in McGregor Hall, the upstairs performance space for Smiths and in the end Nigel was running both rooms and the bar upstairs.  Despite dinner we were early and interrupted Federico warming up, but all was well.  The turnout was too small, despite support from the Italian Embassy, and that Federico was playing at Brisbane and Melbourne Jazz Festivals and had won a guitar award at the Montreux Jazz Fest with George Benson heading the jury and attended  Berkley on a scholarship and graduated summa cum laude.  And James doesn't give faint praise so I expected something good, even if not in a band context.  Federico was playing a white strat with an extra pickup and a neatly arrange semicircle of effects and pedals in front of him and headphones  for monitoring.  From the start, this was intriguing and beguiling and wonderfully fluid.  Layers of lengthy loops laid down so subtly that you almost didn't notice the development.  That extra pickup was to feed the low E-A strings to an octaver for bass lines, often simple 1-5s or outlining long and complex harmonic structures, that got added to with repeating riffs or chords or moving arpeggiations then perhaps another layer and a melody or solo with the whole so mellifluous that the role of melody or solo was unobtrusive, just musical.  A sound that was edgy and alive, perhaps high gain, demanding of consistent fingering technique, all finger-picked throughout.  Given the small audience and a few musicians and followers we got chatting, on stage and off, so the distance just disappeared and the musical purpose became all.  Chats of jazz and classics, technical and artistics, emotions and intellect, mates in Paris, jazz training in Sienna.  Federico is Italian, from Treviso, living in Paris, having a strong connection with the Dolomites.  James knew him from recordings with Steve Swallow and Enrico Pieranunzi and more.  He stunned me at times with richly varied harmonic movements playing with long intervals and scalar snippets, malleable structures, unusual and intriguing, spidery fingering laying out fascinating melodic movements, and that constant variation of tones and layers, busy but subtle.  We'[d discussed jazz as standards and bop so he dropped in a very broadly imagined version of Stella that only became obvious after several minutes, and then a take on the Sound of silence.  All in this new space/old room with a nice little column PA and a balcony and too small an audience.  A fabulous but also deeply inviting event.  Thanks to all who took part and obviously, especially, to Federico.

Federico Casagrande (guitar, effects, loops) performed solo at McGregor Hall, above Smiths.