Mr. G. and Love
The tribute to Giorgio Gaber that Rossana Casale strongly wanted and which bears the patronage of the Giorgio Gaber Foundation, is returning to the theater tour after 8 years. Starting next October 2024. The collaboration with the Foundation was already born several years ago out of a deep esteem for the singer-songwriter, the long friendship with his daughter Dalia and the frequentation of Gaber’s home shared with other artists of the Milanese sphere that Rossana recounts in the book ‘Gaber, Giorgio, il Signor G’ . Her conducting of ‘Milano per Giorgio Gaber’ in 2008 and speaking engagements at the Gaber Festival in Viareggio (2006/ 2007/ 2013), up to the Giorgio Gaber Award that was presented to her on the stage of the Repaci Award in Viareggio last summer 2023 for her efforts in popularizing Giorgio Gaber’s work. Says Rossana, “When you sing Gaber’s songs for the first time, you know you can never stop.” And it was a few years ago the idea of making Mr. G speak only of love, of telling the audience his thoughts on a subject that was difficult for him, intimate, full of opposing thoughts: truth and lies, compulsory freedom and the necessary return, ‘the need to invent’ as he used to say and the search for meaning, the cage and the habitual , the false and the tender, the padlock, the outside, the cry and that word so difficult to pronounce : ‘..how does this of ours have more meaning how does this of ours have more value…’ . “Putting those songs together, listening to them and singing them one after the other, is like sitting at a table with Giorgio Gaber and listening to him, sometimes serious sometimes sarcastic, telling about his life but also yours and everyone’s, “ says Casale. And that is why, both in the 2014 record work Artist First) and in the tour, Rossana called upon Jazz to reformulate Mr. G’s songs, without ever forcing them in their imprint and without changing the name of the original chords.”
In the play script, from Casale’s own idea and direction, in addition to the two monologues written by her, there are also texts from Gaber’s shows, poems by Borges, Szymborska, Alda Merini and a short story by Sandro Luporini.
Almost Blue
In common parlance, blue is the color of melancholy and hope. From the blue sentiment comes the blues, the one that has its roots in the songs of slaves in the cotton fields, in the hope for freedom and revenge. ‘The blues is more than a color, it is a wail of pain, the taste of conflict, a sad refrain but also a game at which life plays'( ed. song All blues- Kind of Blue M. Davis 1959). And it is the color blue, a metaphor of spirituality and transcendence, of tranquility and silence, of contemplation, that is the concept of Rossana Casale’s new project to be released in June 2024 by Egea Music. “A few months ago, while I was taking a long walk by the sea, on one of those days where you can’t tell how you really feel,“ says Casale,” observing the sharp encounter between water and sky, I found myself singing to myself the song Blue Skies by Irvin Berlin and consequently scrolling through my mind all the jazz songs that named the word blue within their title or lyrics. From the more melancholic ballads such as Little girl blue, which Nina Simone sang on her very first album in 59 or Am I blue brought to success by Ethel Waters, to Elvis Costello’s Almost Blue sung by the velvet voice of Chet Baker, Blue in green, a mystical song by Miles Davis, to the more carnal and abstract songs such as Coltrane’s Afro Blue or fun songs such as Dave Brubeck’s Blue Rondo a la Turk that even Al Jarreau brought to success in the 80’ playing on the lyrics themselves. So many came to mind. So I got the idea to create a work entirely aimed at eviscerating that word so aptly addressed to jazz and the musician who frees it from its prisons that want it only sad. It is not just like that.” Rossana Casale chooses the songs that jazz has dedicated to ‘The color of colors,’ as Miles Davis defined it, and creates her new in-jazz project by adding the unreleased ‘Shades of blue,’ written four hands with musician Luigi Bonafede. A return to the purest jazz, Casale’s, after several years (Jazz in me 1994, Billie Holiday in me 2004), although jazz strsso has always been at home on her dedicated albums (Jaques Brel in me 1999, Strani Frutti 2000, Il Signor G e l’Amore 2013, Round Christmas 2016, JONI 2022).
With her are great jazz men with long careers in Italy and abroad, sublime musicians who return from her past and with whom she has shared albums and tours. They are: Carlo Atti on tenire sax, Luigi Bonafede on piano, Enzo Zirilli on drums and new acquaintance, Alessandro Maiorino on double bass.
