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PORTRAIT IN JAZZ OF AN ARTIST - MARCO DI MARCO
It is 'the' event of the beginning of this century: very frequently now jazz has an Italian accent. We presume that this palace revolution did not take place in one day. Over the course of many decades, great artists, to whom the world was not necessarily inclined to pay attention, strove to overcome prejudices, dispel indifference; and above all to impose, without obligation, their poetry.“ My Poetry “ is in fact the title of an unforgettable Marco Di Marco’s album. This pianist, who became known internationally in the sixties, was among these veterans.
In shaping his art, of which he has never stopped refining the relief and multiplying the shades, he has opened the way for others.
Fifty years on, he remains one of the most solid mainstays of peninsular jazz and at the same time is one of its most potent ambassadors.
Paris, then New York and London, are to date the cities in which he has carried out most of his recordings.In Manhattan, Marco, as all jazzmen do, went back to the roots. The best part of the story however, comes from the fact that he was able to make Manhattan dream.Proof of this is that since 1981, he has been a guest of the Carnegie Hall, the most prestigious of all American Concert Halls, where Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, Charlie Parker, Stan Getz, Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Billie Holiday, have left their vibrations. Just as he included his name in a list of pianists founded by Count Basie, James P. Johnson, Meade Lux Lewis, Pete Johnson, Albert Ammons (in 1938), before a brilliant performance of Oscar Peterson in 1949, which determined the entire career of the Canadian pianist in the States.“Even”, a Modern Jazz Record CD (MJC-0606), out in 2006, preserves the memory of a performance, so touching and all the way through the program (Time Remembered, Nardis, Israel, Blues for Bill), in the atmosphere, the light and darkness which fill his numerous interpretations (for example “ Lungo la Senna” by the same Di Marco), as if it were a tribute to Bill Evans, who died a few months before. It was after that evening that Di Marco went further still in the exploration of his own universe.Nevertheless, EVENT does justice to all the qualities that without a similar evolution would not have been possible: a refined sensibility; an eternally present extolled sensuality; a glamour that although discreet is none the less disturbing; a melodic freshness continually renewed; a strong and rare mixture of sensibility and generosity, of effusion and control.It is in this sense that this CD simultaneously offers in the work of its author a balance of all his past conquests and a benchmark for all future triumphs.
Practically speaking it symbolizes the center of gravity.Furthermore he offers us an example of what must be, at the keyboard, a solitary journey.In this kind of exercise one must risk everything without taking liberties. You must know how far you can venture, holding the tiller steady in the storms that you yourself have created.
In this Marco is an incredibly skilled skipper, he is one of those people who does everything with elegance.I recommend with pleasure approaching this recital from the end. On the theme of “ Why did I choose you ?”, which was part also of the Bill Evans repertoire, you can understand particularly well how the creator creeps into in his creation and extracts the quintessence of his art in such an insidious way, making discretion an extremely precious paradoxical form of aesthetic fertility. A musician with such skill, can never again disappoint.
Alain Gerber - Writer and Jazz critic
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