Unexpected additions

It was our last day in Milan and we were relaxing with an outing to the Castello Sforzesco and its museums. It’s quite a fascinating and mixed collection of museums and in the end we didn’t see it all. We did see several ancient and mediaeval collections and decorative arts and musical instruments and Leonardo and Michelangelo. I hadn’t expected either of them. The Leonardo is the roof decoration in the Salla delle Asse (Room of Wooden Boards) but it’s in terrible condition, having been painted over and much lost in restoration. But you can imagine the glory of the room’s columns appearing ass tree trunks and a complex, swirling arrangement of branches and twigs and leaves above. Stunning in concept if much less in presence. The Michelangelo, too, was a challenge. He died while making it. It’s the Pietá Rodanini, looking unfinished, long and perhaps unreal, faces unfinished, just one leg finished with polish mostly with chisel-markings evident. Very much like several statues fronting David in Firenze. Jesus’ face seemed unable to be completed given lack of stone to cut. The stretched bodies suggested an error but was likened by an overheard guide with Modigliani as evidence of Michelangelo’s early modernity. Perhaps. Certainly it’s a late work so a simple error seems unlikely. All matters for thought and further reading. Otherwise, three contrabassi were in the museum of musical instruments: a slithery flat-back with three gut strings; two with curved backs and violin shapes, one with four strings, the other with five. Plenty more instruments. Otherwise, furniture and porcelain and statuary and paintings and frescoes and furniture, mediaeval through to Canaletto and later. Archeology and Egyptiana (closed for restoration). And the areas we missed, including photography and drawings. Odd that commentary on the Net suggested 1-2 hours to visit. We took ~5 hours and ended in a rush and still missed a whole wing. But that’s our way. A nice and broad collection and even a Leonardo and a Michelangelo.

Leonardo da Vinci Salla delle Asse and Michelangelo Pietà Rodanini and lots more are in the Museums at the Castello Sforzesco in Milan.

Interruptions

In the end, we did get to see Il Cenacolo, Leonardo da Vinci’s famed Last Supper. An early visit to the ticket office, 7am for 8am, got me second spot in line and there were some tickets available for that afternoon. Number one in line was a local who goes early fairly often to buy tickets for visiting relatives and he was confident at 7am and successful at 8am. So keep that in mind, those who read this. You gain entry for a 15 minute session in the old refectory in a group of 25. Other than the Leonardo, there’s some explanatory material before and after your visit, and one large facing fresco, a Crucifixion by Giovanni Donato da Montorfano and some coat of arms lunettes and decorative frescoes that survived WW2 bombing. The Cenacolo was painted in tempera on gesso and has suffered over time. Best to see a photo to view the subject at its best, but it’s nice to be there. It’s faded but the structure and some details and faces are clear enough. So there’s some disappointment in the visit and a satisfaction as in scratching an itch. The quest for Leonardo’s paintings, somewhat a McGuffin and a minor amusement, continues.

Il Cenacolo (the Last Supper) of Leonardo da Vinci is in the refectory attached to Santa Marie delle Grazie in Milan.

Big names

Bad Plus is a pretty big name and Blue Note definitely is. I got to Blue Note Milan (there’s a string of them now) to hear Ethan Iverson and trio, Ethan being the ex-pianist of Bad Plus. It almost turned out a failure. I’d booked from Canberra but then a family event almost interfered, but I made it. I had tried to change to the late show but that had been cancelled. The 9pm show was busy but not full. I was alone so it’s easier, but I managed virtually a front row seat. It was interesting to watch EI’s gentle, mellifluous hands and his various easy harmonic inventions. I liked that. Also bassist Joe Sander’s deliriously quick fills very so often right up the neck, and his singing solos and his otherwise solid walks. He has a lovely, interesting melodic and sequenced take on walks, obvious especially when they jammed a blues in F#, the key called by a young bassist sitting at my table at an audience invitation. Drums seemed fairly prosaic in this context although he’d played with the biggest names, not least several years with Brad Mehldau. But thinking further I felt a sense of time warp here. There was fluent harmonic interest and firm walks but I thought a lack of that rhythmic concern that’s been such an element of contemporary jazz. And the covers are not Nirvana now but Diz and Duke. Otherwise, all the band wrote tunes, perhaps riddlingly complex heads and driving walks or secret sambas or a floating dissonance or that improv blues. I was admiring of some very nice playing but a little non-plussed. Maybe it’s the day and the rush to get there. It wasn’t the beer; that was OK. So, nice playing and a genuine touch of NYC (they had left only that morning, early) but just not quite doing it for me this night even if the students on my table were ecstatic.

Ethan Iverson (piano) led a trio with Joe Sanders (bass) and Jorge Rossy (drums) at Blue Notes Milan.

The quest

Our quest for he works of Leonardo da Vinci continues here in Milan. His presence is tourist-palpable here, with a commercial display and a science museum named for him and his local canal design promoted and his statue in front of La Scala. The big Leonardo, after the Louvre’s Mona Lisa, is Il Cenacolo, the Last supper, which miraculously survived bombing in WW2, located here in the monks refectory beside Santa Maria dele Grazie. That remains just a hope after I discovered bookings are required months before and I was too late. More on that if we manage entry somehow. Otherwise, we’ve visited the Biblioteca Ambrosiana and found his Musician there, along with some of his drawings from papers held there and a fabulous, huge cartoon for the Vatican’s Philosophers painting by Raphael. That was unexpected and a stunner. There are other gems, too, of course, here and in La Brera, the main local gallery that was envisioned by Napoleon as Italy’s Louvre, and for which he grabbed art from throughout Italy. It tends to the Baroque but there are gems nonetheless, Mantegna, Fra Angelico, some massive wall-sized works, the very popular Kiss and the particularly beautiful wedding of Mary and Joseph in which Raphael aged 21 surpassed his teacher Perugino. As for things on show, this is also Milan Fashion Week and there are models and chauffeured black Mercs and Audis everywhere. I read that ~2,400 models are in town now, of which, some few will be discovered. We ate lunch just next to one group and I met one young man who was the splitting image of a mediaeval Italian condottiere, prevalent in these galleries. He was professionally distant in the photo but playfully friendly out so quite a pleasure. One week in Milan.

The Brera and the Biblioteca Ambrosiana are galleries in Milan and the streets are busy with Milan Fashion Week.

Delirium

It was a quick transition, but we’ve arrived in Milan and what do you know, another festival. This one is Mito Settembre Musica. We had three choices and one was easy walking distance, so made for us, but our preference anyway. Third Coast Percussion playing minimalism by Philip Glass, Steve Reich, Devonté Hynes, Gavin Bryars and David Skidmore, one member of the band. TCP are an American percussion quartet out of Chicago with a Grammy to their name, so capable and respected. Also entertaining and interactive, in the sense that David, obviously not an Italian speaker, managed to introduce the band and its tunes in Italian, if with very authentic accents on the names in English. Admittedly he was reading from a phone for some extended passages, but he had some knowledge of Italian if a strong accent. They played the mind-boggling complex rhythms and polyrhythms with commitment and attention, of course, but also with clear communication and enjoyment. They moved around and through instruments, played tuned or not, were obviously well choreographed to the extent of turning music for each other in busy passages. And the music was fascinating and complex and deliriously polyrhythmic and I love that. But oddly I felt I knew their characters by the end of the concert, or rather much earlier. Strangely clearly these were four people, not just musicians, with characters and presentations that were clear in a way that I don’t think I’ve ever experienced in concert before. The outgoing ones and the more introverted; the one who virtually stared at a current partner (some jazz players do that, I wish I could); the one who spoke in Italian and composed; the one who was everywhere at all times and seemed to have particular chops. Actually, they all did have great chops. There was humour like the encore that started with them playing large wooden hair combs and continued with a music box fed with its own pianola-like reel. There was drama with one gong and I thought I heard a synth drone at the start but that may have been soft percussion for something later was just that and there movement as players switched instruments across stage and concentrations when they played one marimba (was this all four on one?) from front and back. And there were jagged sequences and unrelenting tensions and also soft settlement and beauteous percussive sounds. And those deliriously deliciously complex polyrhythms throughout. Wow, loved it.

Third Coast Percussion comprised David Skidmore, Robert Dillon, Peter Martin and Sean Connors (percussion). They performed for RAIRadio3 and MITO SettemberMusica in the Shakespeare room at Teatro Elfo Puccini in Milan.