Franco D'Andrea and Dj Rocca - Franco D'Andrea Meets Dj Rocca (2022)

For a jazz musician, sound is everything. It represents its identity and is the research field of all life. If we think of Coltrane, Monk, Miles, Bill Evans, Lester Young, Ben Webster or any other jazz musician, even before their phrasing, their songs, we think of their sound, both individual and that of the groups they led. Indeed, we think of them as a sound. Franco D'Andrea's is a research on sound that starts from afar. The electrical experience with the Perigee, the exploration of the piano, all the possible tonal combinations of its groups, often from the unorthodox ensemble, to the sound of the interval, which has a structural, harmonic and melodic function, but which in definitive is a sonority, it is timbre. In this work with Roccatagliati D’Andrea he plunges into abyssal depths. Nothing like electronics can investigate sound, breaking it, synthesizing it, reinventing it. And that's exactly what Roccatagliati does. Added to this is D'Andrea's exploration of the sound of intervals. But what makes this exploration truly compelling is the fact that it is alive. Electronics are not the environment, the background, the context in which the piano acts: Roccatagliati plays like a jazz musician who stimulates and responds to stimuli and the entire performance is governed by the deepest interplay.

Franco D'Andrea meets Dj Rocca, a meeting between two absolute protagonists of the Italian music scene, two sound explorers in search of all the possible connections between jazz and electronics. Attracted by an unexpected synergy, Franco D'Andrea and DJ Rocca create a project that combines distant passions, different generations and often distant cultural references, thanks to a single and shared curiosity towards the infinite languages ​​of music.

It all started with a remix - says Franco D'Andrea - on a short piano introduction of mine. The work that DJ Rocca did seemed brilliant to me. Since then I have thought that I would have liked to have him in some of my projects, but I had not yet imagined the simplest thing: meeting him in a musical dialogue for two.

Each concert of this duo is an opera in itself, there is no setlist or reference repertoire, everything is born on the spot: riffs, interval sequences, polyrhythms and new timbral combinations are the result of this new encounter.

Before being a DJ and a fan of electronic music - says Dj Rocca - I am a lover of jazz. I attended the conservatory and the family has always listened to "cultured" music. Franco D'Andrea is for me an artist as I have always tried to be in my small way: eclectic. The progressive Perigeo project was formative at an early age, thanks to the ratings of my older brother. Later, in the 80s, I found Franco in my afro acquaintances, when he played with African musicians. My artistic training then continued with a career as a DJ, thanks also to my black music background. It is therefore a natural path, today, to express myself, with my attitude as an electronic musician, together with contemporary jazz artists of D'Andrea's caliber.

But it is not the first time that D'Andrea and Rocca have met on stage. The collaboration between the two, in fact, was born in 2015, following a contest created by the transmission of Radio 2 Musical Box, in which a piece by D'Andrea was remixed by a series of Italian producers. Among the participants, Luca Roccatagliati aka DJ Rocca, whose talent D’Andrea immediately appreciated, deciding without delay to name him the winner. Attracted by an unexpected synergy, Franco D'Andrea and DJ Rocca, with the addition of saxophonist Andrea Ayassot, then created the trio "Electric Tree", also recording an album of the same name for the Parco della Musica Records. The two then find themselves together again in the octet "Intervals" by Franco D'Andrea, also recording two double albums.

Franco D'Andrea has belonged to the leading group of Italian jazz musicians and composers for decades. Born in Merano in 1941, he recorded his first album with Gato Barbieri in '64. Since these years, collaborations have begun with many important musicians on the international scene (including Johnny Griffin, Dexter Gordon, Steve Lacy, Lee Konitz, Phil Woods, Dave Liebman etc.). At the end of the 1960s, together with Franco Tonani and Bruno Tommaso, he founded the "Modern Art Trio", whose disc has recently been reissued for the Déjavu label. In 1972 he joined the progressive jazz group "Perigeo". From the end of the 70s he gave life to his own formations, held concerts as a soloist and began his activity as a teacher (he participates in the "Siena Jazz" seminars from their foundation to today, from 1993 to 2006 he taught jazz at the conservatory of Trento, currently he teaches at the Civic Jazz Courses in Milan and conducts several master classes). He has more than 200 recordings to his credit. From the 80s to today he has been more.