Maurizio GIAMMARCO (Jazz Hot 622)

By Serge Baudot

Maurizio Giammarco was born in Pavia (Italy) on the 17th of october 1952. He is one of the most influential musician in his country, and one of the best saxophone player on the European jazz scene, not to say on the international jazz scene. After having played jazz mixed with rock, rythm & blues, and other musics, he has become a pure jazzman since 1970. He is a generous musician deeply rooted in traditional jazz, and he has been able to find his own way through the first Coltrane, Sonny Rollins and a few others. He is an eclectic composer, a highly skilled leader, that is to say a complete musician.
He has played with Chet Baker, Lester and Joe Bowie, Joe Dorio, George Gruntz, Dave Liebman, Bil Cobham, Perter Erskine, Marc Johnson, Kenny Wheeler, Phil Woods, Art Lande, Toots Thielemans, Miroslav Vitous, Daniel Humair, and of course the best of the Italian and European Jazzmen.
The man is humble, highly friendly, loquacious in several languages, and above all a great connoisseur of the state of jazz nowadays.


Jazz Hot : How do you happen to play the saxophone ?
Maurizio Giammarco : I’ve been from the very beginning a jazz fan. At 10 years old I was already interested in music. I heard a record by Duke Ellington, I still have it as a relique. It was a collection of music of 1937, 38 by Pathé, the Black And Brass period, beautiful ! And so I went on listening this particular record. A few years later I convinced my mother to buy jazz records from the traditional stuff. So I did all the jazz evolution in a few years, from new-orleans to modern jazz. I started to play saxophone at 15, I was already listening to bebop, and even John Coltrane. Of course I started playing with my friends some rythm & blues and rock-and-roll, but I always listened to jazz. Finally I played only jazz, towards the late sixties early seventies.

Why the saxophone ?
It is a very difficult question. At first I was playing the trumpet, but my mother was part of the choice, because she said : Why don’t you play the saxophone, I like it. So I started with the tenor saxophone.

And then you loved it ?
Yes, of course. (Laugh)

Were there musicians in your family, or were your parents interested by the music ?
No, no musicians. And my mother was not so glad at the beginning, but she was respectful and democratic, so she let me go.

Who were your sax heroes ?
From the very beginning Bud Freeman, then of course Charlie Parker…Then everybody, Lester Young, of course Coltrane in the late sixties. Mainly after that Sonny Rollins who has been, I think, my biggest influence.

You wrote a book about Sonny Rollins ?
Yes, I wrote a book because I love him, and there are so many books on John Coltrane. There are not so many on Sonny Rollins, that’s one of the reason why I chose him. It’s Gianfranco Salvatore who asked me to write a book on Sonny Rollins. I was reluctant at the beginning because that meant a lot of work, then I did it because I really love Sonny Rollins, and I know almost all his records. It took me one year to collect the material, and then I wrote he book in four months.

Did you meet him ?
I met him one time, when I gave him the book. He was very glad. Unfortunately I didn’t meet him when I wrote the book, and I’ve never played with him !

Did you try to imitate somebody at the beginning ?
As a sax player I studied mostly Coltrane and Rollins. When I played with Chet baker in the late seventies, and when I came in Paris in 1980, they said in the reviews that I was playing very much in the early Coltrane style, which is probably right. Now I am not listening to anybody particularly. I think I’ve found my own sound, I’ve reached the point where I don’t play a note that I don’t want to play, not one less, not one more. Some people say I have a style, but I can’t tell it myself.

Obviously you have your own sound, did you work to get it, or did it come naturally ?
It was a kind of natural development. I believe in natural development. You have to study, practise, and of course meditating about your sound, and it comes out. No rush.

What sort of studies did you do ?
I studied harmony with a very good Italian composer, the late Gino Marinuzzi, in Roma. For jazz I went to the States around 1975, I studied in the Creative Music Studio, that was an avant-garde school, leaded by Carl Berker. We made a lot of clinics there with Dave Holland, Jack DeJohnette, people like that. And I studied in New-York with the legendary Jo Allard, a very famous teacher. He’s dead now unfortunately, he was already pretty old. He taught to everybody, just to name a few : Eric Dolphy, Dave Liebman who has been another great influence for me, I made clinics with him and we have developped a friendship.

In the middle of the eighties you had a quartet called Lingomania ?
The group had a pretty good success in Italy because not much was happening in those years. (Rire) And involving very good musicians who have made a career by themselves, like Roberto Gatto, Dani Laurea, Enzo Pietro Paoli, Umberto Fiorentino the guitar player, Furio Di Castro who was playing in the group, and Flavio Boltro also, so it was a kind of generation group, and I’ve been lucky to be the leader of this group of young and good musicians. Some of them have made a very good career, and they are more famous than me now (laughs). The group was very interesting because we were really playing together, it was a band in a rock field, it was a kind of heritage from the rock-and-roll ethic. But of course we were playing jazz, a kind of electric jazz, but not sophisticated, not fusion, something between Miles Davis and Steps Ahead.

In the end of the eighties you got several awards from Musica Jazz, etc ?
Lingomania won the critic jazz pool for 3 years : best band in Italy. I had some rewards as a musician. It was a good period for me, very productive.

Was it important to get those rewards ?
The recognition of Musia Jazz was important of course for a musician of our generation because we were the new generation coming out, let’s say in a very conservative environment, as was the Italian jazz. Well we were not playing so much like people play now, because I think jazz is much more played now, there are many more places where to play, but it was important to establish our names in the community.

And even outside of Italy ?
We didn’t play much outside of Italy, it was too early. The nineties have been the crucial point for the Italian musicians to go outside. But in those years I founded a family and I was involved in other things.

Can you understand why there are no jazz clubs in Rome or Milan, or at least so few ?
Now there are some clubs. There is La Palma in Alexander Platz in Roma. Roma is not bad now. In Milan there has been no clubs for a lot of years, but now there is the Blue Note.

But it’s more or less for American musicians ?
Yes, that’s what is said. I’ve never been there, so I can’t talk about it.

I think you write music for films, for the theater, for ballets ?
Part of my work is to compose music. Now I do it principally for my new group Megatons. I always write music.

Does that influence the way you play jazz, or is it completely different ?
They are both sides of the same medal. I compose with a view to improvise and I improvise with a view to compose. The same object seen from different points of view.

I suppose that sometime you keep an idea that has come in an improvisation, and develop it ?
Of course, you develop some ideas coming from improvisation, and the same on the other side.

What was this piece of music called “ Naples in Jazz ” ? 
Naples in Jazz has been a project commissioned by Paolo Fresu for his Festival in Berchidda. They are Napolitan songs that I arranged in jazz for a string section and a jazz quintet. We’ve been playing this music for a few times. it’s a big project, so it’s not so easy to perform it.

What were your greatest moments in jazz since your first appearance on the stage ?
I’ve been several times in New York in the seventies where I had the pleasure to play with Lester Bowie in The Village Vanguard, I already knew him because I had played with him in Italy. I did a big concert in Harlem where I made a lot of rehearsals with plenty of musicians from the black area, the AACM from Chicago, Roscoe Mitchell, Anthony Braxton, Jack DeJohnette. That was a performance with 60 musicians, all great names, in the Symphony Space of New York, in 1979 ; we made 2 concerts, that was really a big event. But the most important thing for me was not the conconcert but the rehearsals during the two months before with all those people among them : Dave Murray, Frank Lowe, Olu Dara, etc, I was really inside the black community, it is a pretty rare thing to do because of the segregation side of the jazz field, which is horrible. Eventually it’s easier for European musicians to be involved in black groups than for white Americans. I know a lot of musicians who have never played in such an atmosphere as I’ve had the pleasure to play, back in the seventies. I’m talking about the winter of 78/79. So I knew all these guys and also I played with Joe Bowie, Lester’s brother, bringing him to Italy with a lot of other black musicians. It was very nice and very important for me of course. And at the same period I was playing with Chet Baker in Italy, a different kind of music ; this also another one of my particularities, because I always did many different things in jazz, for example playing free jazz with Lester, or standards with Chet Baker. But because it was part of my growing as a musician I’ve always been very open.

What sort of man was Lester Bowie ?
Lester was great, completely open, very supporting, it was very important to rehearse with him, we had to do everything by memory, it was really in the black tradition. He was very friendly and I miss him very much.

How was it with Chet baker ?
It was of course a bit different but I’ve never had any problems with musicians. Chet was in a strange period of time. He tried to have a steady band at that time, Ricardo del Fra was there, just before he chose to live in Paris, in 1980, right after my experience in the States.

Did you learn a lot with Chet ?
With Chet it was more a matter of learning while listening, because he was not a very speaking person. But he was an unbelievable poet. Listening to him every night was an experience because he was always playing the same tune and always inventing something different : unbelievable !

In 1993 you had the Heart Quintet or Quartet ?
Yes, for 3 or 4 years. They were young musicians from Toscana. It was a nice band, a kind of classic quartet, playing my music which is, let’s say, post modern in inspiration. So it was a kind of experiment to play modern style of classical jazz inspiration. They were my compositions, that I can call a little transversal, with a classic jazz quartet. A little bit as Joshua Redman does. But we did it a little time before him ! It was a period when the Italian Instabile Orchestra was playing some free jazz. We had great success with this group, I regret it is over . It was a beautiful experience.

And what about your new band ?
It’s called Megatons, it’s a quintet with a baryton sax player, every kind of keyboards, bass and drums. We have been developping little by little over those past three years. I am composing a lot of structured music and a lot of improvisational music, both in a very radical way with a lot of improvisation, no blockchords, no changes, only counterpoint, I am exploring new areas of music with this group which is very different from the group you heard last night (The trio with Miroslav Vitous and Daniel Humair).

But I heard a lot of counterpoints, especially between the bass and you?
Yes, because I like to think it that way, because I think in jazz there is a sort of tiredness with chord changes, so I think everybody is trying to find other ways of expression.

What is jazz for you ?
For me it’s a universe of discovering, a relationship with other human beings, my personal development as a human being. It’s a pretty serious thing. (Laughs)

According to you, what makes the difference between jazz and the other musics ?
As everybody knows the improvisation.

Well, but improvisation exists in almost all the musics ? What is really specific ?
That’s true. If you are talking about jazz, I think that to use this word we must have three elements. I’ve always thought that, and then I discovered that Sonny Rollins made the same statement, so I agree with his statement, even if I came to the same conclusion before I read his interview : you must have swing, and swing is not specifically the symbol of the drummer, it’s a kind of sensitiveness, a superior attitude towards the rythm, it’s a thing which can be outside the tempo, a thing that you can recognize in the jazz musicians. And then there must be the blues, a thing which is also a philosophy, and a sense of the history of this music. These are the three elements which make jazz what it is, and allow to improvise. For example in Europe it’s difficult to find musicians who have a sense of the blues. Most of them have a great attitude with the rythm, they have this sense of history, but very few have a sense of the blues. When one of this element is missing, it can be great music, but probably not jazz. In jazz there is a plus value, the plus value of the jazz culture. The whole tradition of jazz comes with you when you play, this is the plus value. Jazz is a particular music in which we give so much importance to the personal definition. This is particularly interessant because we bring a lot of things which are spritual. It’s not for example to read a partition of Vivaldi.

Do you think there is what we could call an Italian jazz, or a European jazz which could be different from the American jazz ?
The old question ! There are a lot of very good Italian jazz musicians. Personally I’ve always thought that there is jazz here, and you may reach the point to play jazz in the development of the Italian jazz scene or in the development of the European jazz scene, but that makes much more evidence of the importance of the individuality in jazz music. So at the same time we can make the hypothesis that, in the Italian jazz scene in the reality of the world, what is important is the individuality of the musician. So it’s a counter sense. I think the individuality is much more important from what is similar between me and another Italian jazz musician. So I don’t believe actually that there is an Italian jazz scene like a French one or a German one. I think there are many musicians who are trying to follow their road according to what happens.

And it’s a fact that many Italian musicians go abroad to develop their career ?
It is part of the story of course. We can talk about Italian or French jazz, or what you want, but many musicians use material from the ethnic tradition of their country, this happens a lot in Italy. But to me this is another story, it’s a different kind of music. I did some popular music myself in the seventies, we were the progressive folk rock group in Italy, Cansoniere del Latium, in 76/77, it has been a lengendary group. I wasn’t playing jazz at all there, I was improvising in a context that was popular and progressive, much more rock oriented.

Do you think it’s still possible to find a new trend, a new way, or at least a new sound in jazz ?
For me what is difficult is to keep the meaning of jazz, to keep going for what we used to call jazz. In order to do different things, or new things, you must break a lot of rules, and so maybe your music has nothing to do with jazz any more, that’s what I think. I think that in a way jazz is more or less in a bad situation, comparing from what we use to know from Louis Armstrong to Dizzy Gillespie and Sun Ra.

But they all broke some rules ?
They broke the rules but keeping the same meaning of what I call jazz. Now because creativity comes a lot from Europe more than from the States, the music changes in quite a different way. And as musicians are coming from other areas of the planet, and I am sure some nice music will come from the Middle East, Japan etc, but I am afraid it will be very difficult to call this music jazz, even if everyboby decides to call it jazz, even if they still improvise. The word will be empty of meaning. But there is a lot of space for a lot of things.

Your projects ?
Just leading this group Megatons, and a few different things. I have another group with four tubas and saxophones, a special project. I hope to keep going with my collaboration with Miroslav Vitous, for now he lives in Italy. As a sax player I am a guest in various projects, one calls me to play here and there. I have to record next month with Megatons, I still don’t know for which label, I have a few choices.

You’ve made a lot of records, do you know how many ?
More than 60 I think.

E-mail : maugiamm@tiscalinet.it