The jazz super trio led by American pianist Brad Mehldau, with Larry Grenadier on double bass and Jeff Ballard on drums, will inaugurate the nineteenth edition of the Ritratti Festival in Monopoli on July 17, which until August 3 will offer a series of events on the theme « stop time". The band's concert will be one of the flagship events of Monopoli's summer, presented today by the municipal administration.
Defined by the New York Times as the most influential jazz pianist of the last twenty years, Mehldau, who in 2019 was a guest of the Ritratti Festival in a solo version, was nominated thirteen times at the Grammy Awards, where he triumphed in 2019 with «Finding Gabriel» , considered the best instrumental jazz album. A disc containing ten songs inspired by the Old Testament played with different formations, which was followed in 2021 by "Jacob's Ladder", a reflection on the Holy Scriptures and the search for God through music inspired by prog rock.
Absolute protagonist of the international jazz scene, but with many points of contact with the world of classical music (jazz arrived after the discovery of Thelonious Monk, Oscar Peterson and Bill Evans), Mehldau has just released a tribute to the Beatles entitled «Your Mother Should Know», solo album recorded in September 2020 at the Philharmonie in Paris.
PRESS RELEASE
Determined to «stop time», the Festival Ritratti di Monopoli sets an artistic project in instants which declines in its various meanings a key parameter of music and science, which is also an experience of consciousness. Therefore, time intended above all as rhythm, the very essence of jazz, which becomes sublime art with the awaited super trio led by American pianist Brad Mehldau, arriving with Larry Grenadier on double bass and Jeff Ballard on drums for the inauguration of the nineteenth edition , scheduled for July 17 at Masseria Spina.
«The Portraits Festival - declares the regional councilor in charge of Cultural Policies, Grazia Di Bari - is one of the most awaited events of the summer, capable of attracting visitors from all over Italy and beyond. It is always nice to see our young talents together with internationally renowned artists: the many tourists present in Monopoli in this period will be able to enjoy a series of one-of-a-kind exhibitions. This is the strength of Puglia: offering tourists shows that are impossible to do anywhere else. Also this year the festival will be itinerant, in order to involve all areas of the city. Events like this are important for the entire culture sector, which is why the Region intends to support this and other events planned in the coming weeks in every corner of Puglia. We have been working for some time so that the Region becomes more and more a cultural attraction: those who come to visit us must know that they can not only admire our natural beauties and taste the food and wine delicacies, but also that they can count on a wide and varied cultural offer".
«There is no summer in Monopoli without the Portraits Festival, an event - says the mayor Angelo Annese - which has become a feature of the calendar of events that the city offers to citizens and tourists. Various artists will take turns in a series of rich and prestigious appointments. For this I thank the Euterpe Musical Association and Antonia Valente for their efforts again this year in tracing a rich, varied and above all quality musical journey. Unique exhibitions of their kind with a high cultural value every evening in a suggestive place, always different, to be discovered or rediscovered».
«The life of a musician is a constant relationship with the parameter of time, and the great darkness of the pandemic - says the artistic director Antonia Valente - has sent our system of perceptions into a tailspin, making us paradoxically rediscover the present just as it dispossessed us of the our daily life. That observation point out of the ordinary has slowly carved out the traces of Ritratti Festival 2023, where music becomes a timeless catalyst and center of gravity, re-innovating the relationship between sound and its impact in the community and places where it is created and received. An intimate relationship capable, in the present, of welcoming and incubating the moods of both the performers and the public, potentially capable of canceling the distances between art and life, suspending or moving the hands of time, a portrait of a moment, unique, unrepeatable and, also for this reason, magical».
The thematic dimension of the festival will be investigated in various directions. For example, pop icon Michael Jackson's obsession with youth is at the center of a tailcoat tribute by the Abruzzese Symphony Orchestra conducted by Roberto Molinelli (July 20, Masseria Spina). And then, time sold to the devil which, in the myth of Faust, inspires Stravinsky's "Story of a soldier", a masterpiece of musical theater staged under the direction of Cecilia Ligorio (July 22, Palazzo Palmieri). Furthermore, time as an extension of space in the pages chosen by pianist Emanuele Arciuli for the second year of his residency at Ritratti, where he presents a project ranging from Lou Harrison to William Duckworth with the involvement of soprano Veronica Pompeo, violinist Lorenzo Rovati and percussionist Igor Caiazza (July 25, Cloister of Palazzo San Martino).
A window on didactic time is also planned with «Clocks», a program with a highly original layout that extends from Ligeti to Sollima, Adams and Miguel Del Aguila, the author of the suite in six movements entitled, precisely, «Clocks »: a project that plays with the perceptive experience of durations and temporal planes, and an ensemble in which Stephanie Gurga (piano and harpsichord) and Antonia Valente (piano) are joined by the Albéniz de Prosegur Quartet, in collaboration with the Escuela Superior de Musica Reina Sofia in Madrid (July 27, Cloister of Palazzo San Martino).
At the same time, the focus will be on the ability of music to bring the "still image" representation of Goya's paintings back to the "live" dimension with the piano suite "Goyescas" by Enrique Granados, a work entrusted to the sensitivity of Viviana Lasaracina (29 July Cloister of Palazzo San Martino), before paying homage with the project «All You Can Beat» to the complex polyrhythms of Frank Zappa (on the thirtieth anniversary of his death) and to Azio Corghi, one of the fathers of the post-avant-garde who died last November. Danilo Grassi will set the pace for a formation made up of drummer Gianmarco Petrucci, an ensemble of thirteen percussionists and two pianos (August 1st, Masseria Spina).
The festival will conclude, for the third consecutive year, with the «Cineritratti» section and the synchronization between music and images with the magic of silent cinema by Buster Keaton and his «Seven Chances»: the original compositions by Stephen Prutsman and the musical direction of Alberto Maniaci (August 3, Roof Garden of the Radar Theater).
To complete the program, from 7 July the new project «Ritratti Exhibit», a cycle of widespread art exhibitions in collaboration with Doppelgaenger by Antonella Spano and Marina Bastianello Gallery, «Trovare il Tempo», in-depth meetings on the themes of the festival with several guests and the direction of the expert on the subject, Nicola Pedone, guided tours of the historic center and the «Ritratti Kids» workshop directed by Andrea Gargiulo.