"The provocative notes of Antongiulio Foti's jazz Inaugurate the Estate Eretina
He has been in New York for five years but published his first album in Italy, crafted mixing the sounds of the two sides of the ocean.
Born in Turin, from Calabrian and Sicilian origins, the pianist who inaugurated the opening of the Estate Eretina on Thursday 16 July with a preview of his first album, "Hold Fast", the 20-year-old Antongiulio Foti, was accompanied by Iacopo Ferrazza on double bass and Ettore Fioravanti on percussion in a captivating performance, for an evening organized by the UPE. Arrived in Monterotondo when he was only one year old following his mother, a teacher, and his father, a computer engineer and programmer, he grew up in the Eretina town until he took off, very young, for the United States.
Music is mathematics, does it mean that part of your father's passions have reached you?
During my scientific high school I was interested in many subjects, in fact I had great difficulty choosing what to do in life. I suffered something of an identity crisis; I didn't know what I was, I was afraid of disappointing or depending on the choice of someone else who wanted me to become something. I started playing when I was 5, even though I gradually discovered discipline and study only in my adolescence; I also used to do local classical music competitions, in the 8-9 year olds category the repertoire was free and I always played jazz songs. The commission was often amazed and unprepared because the way one interprets a “musical dialect” is different from the way one judges a classical pianist; those who play jazz try to play the piece in the most original way possible, while those who study classical stick to "orthodoxy". Then as I grew older I discovered that it wasn't exactly like that; there are many nuances in jazz, which has so many rules.
How did you discover the nuances of jazz?
Through the workshops I attended starting from 13-14 years old. Then I won a scholarship to Boston when I was 15; there I won another scholarship to repeat the experience the following summer. We are fortunate to live in an era in which these experiences are almost within everyone's reach, because the most gifted receive financial aid to face travel and life abroad for a period, and this is not taken for granted. At 18 I applied for admission to Berklee in Boston, to the New School and to Manhattan school of Music in New York, I won access to all three and I chose Manhattan, in my opinion the best compromise between a conservatory and a college of music, a smaller school and more exclusive than the other two.
What is the difference?
It depends on how music is taught. The college of music is a term born in the late 1900s, invented by Berklee and is close to the USA university. The conservatory is more European and conservative. Knowledge is more rigorous in the conservatory where, until twenty years ago, jazz was not taught. The paradox is that jazz, as Barack Obama recently pointed out, despite being the classical music of the USA, had to emancipate itself and find a justification to be taught because it was considered a black and lascivious music. But jazz has "whitened" over time because of what white people have done to it and has been taught in a "wrong" way, different. Today there is a revival of the naming “Black American Music”, which has a political significance, because Jazz is a derogatory term that white people assigned and Black americans do not want this music to be despised. In the 1930s and 1950s a different use was made of it, today there is a return to the original message of music and even non-African-Americans try to remain faithful to it..
Do you also like to investigate the history of Jazz?
I'm fascinated by finding missing links, for example between Congo square, New Orleans, and Louis Armstrong. The first was the only square where African-Americans could go and play and sing their music on Sundays. The Jim Crow laws, in the late nineteenth century, are the reason for today's racial discrimination, but they also contributed to the origin of jazz, as these laws introduced the 'one-drop rule'; the norm according to which if you had a drop of black blood, you were black, and you were forced to live in black neighborhoods, even mestizos or creoles, therefore also those who had higher social status and who, for example, had learned to write and play music in the French conservatories.
They seem to be themes that resonate like the Black lives matter movement...
I returned to Italy in March, three days before the lockdown, and by that time all the people in the jazz community had become activists. In Italy we are perhaps in time to avoid doing unpleasant things, and it is no coincidence that in my album there are two movements of a suite called "Mediterranean" which I have arranged to bring attention and shed a light on what we can improve in our sea. In the first movement there is an Italian song and in the second one in ancient Greek, the oldest song that has come down to us, sung by the excellent Sicilian Daniela Spalletta, who sang in Turkish, Arabic and ancient Greek.
Tell us more about your latest project.
The project I recently wrote, Hold Fast, which will be released in September, is also my first album. It is performed by American musicians in the USA and by Italians "at home" and the extremely fascinating thing is that the way the music is played by people from very distinct backgrounds is totally different. To Hold Fast means to "hold tight", and with this I mean the Melody, the trait that remains constant in each song. The songs are almost all written by me and are very different from each other; some are revisited Italian songs, others in odd meters, but all of them have a strong melodic value that I have tried to evolve in the most diverse ways.
What did it mean to grow up in a small town?
It was a value, not a disadvantage, because Monterotondo is only 20 minutes from Rome; I've been lucky. In NY, which seems like the capital of the world, the teachers I’ve discussed with always strive to find the local story of each of us, because in reality there is no center of the world. I wanted to go to NY to escape from the province and also from Rome which didn't suit me, but when I got there I understood the importance of my origins, and as a matter of fact I chose to hold the preview concert of my album in Monterotondo."
Annamaria Iantaffi, from
Culture (Printed Version), “Il Tiburno”
July 21, 2020
Please note that the present article is an automatic-machine translation from the corresponding Italian version. It is hoped, however, that the original sense, style and character have been preserved.