Quartetto Le Virtù Quartet playing the fashinating Claude Bolling's Suites for Flute and Jazz Trio

The LeVirtù Quartet plays “Suite for Flute and Jazz Trio” n°1 and 2 by Claude Bolling

The name of the LeVirtù quartet takes its inspiration from the typical Teramo dish in which "after the long winter season, the most disparate remains of the pantry are combined with the first spring fruits in a mixture of ingredients, of poor origin - fresh and dried legumes, vegetables, lard and pork rind, pasta of different shapes, spices and herbs - through slow and laborious cooking, with the particularity that unlike minestrone, the Virtues keep the flavors of each ingredient intact. The virtues therefore represent the goodwill, wisdom and imagination of popular tradition."

Similarly, the musicians who form this quartet - who study or have already graduated in the classical systems of the conservatories of Teramo and Fermo - have the most disparate backgrounds and approach the repertoire of Claude Bolling's Suite for Flute and Jazz Trio - compositions which moreover are a true cross-over symposium of different musical languages - with an analytical spirit and with a technique deriving from classical studies and different sensibilities.

Amanda Ferrero – pf
Piedmontese origins but trained in the Marches, she graduated in piano at the Fermo Conservatory in 2014 under the guidance of maestro Fabrizio Viti. Although the profession of child neuropsychiatrist leads her to take other paths and to move back to the north, she never abandons the instrument, but rather, she explores new aspects of it and explores the blues and modern repertoire, also implementing it in her profession.
Nicolas Alessio Perez - fl
Argentine origins but born in Abruzzo, he began studying the flute very early, then entering the “G. Braga” Conservatory in Teramo shortly after the establishment of the academic course under the guidance of Maestro Giuseppe Pelura (National Academy of S. Cecilia, Rome Opera House, RAI, Chigiana Academy of Siena, etc.). He has played with some orchestral institutions in Abruzzo and is also enrolled in the classical piano course to complete his instrumental training.
Diego Amadio – cb
He too, coming from the Teramo Conservatory, began studying the electric bass and then the double bass early. He has played for numerous orchestral institutions in Abruzzo and for the Junior Orchestra of the Accademia di Santa Cecilia. He is currently attending the advanced course of the Stauffer Academy in Cremona in double bass.
Jacopo Sabbatucci – bt
After years of studying drums and militancy in various formations of the most diverse genres with which he has played numerous stages around Italy, Ireland, Germany, Austria, Czech Rep., Hungary, Croatia, Bosnia Herzegovina, Serbia etc., back in his native land he devoted himself to teaching and completing his academic training, this time at a Percussion Instruments Course, of the Conservatory of Teramo.

Claude Bolling

Died in 2021 at the age of 90, he was a singular and talented French pianist, conductor and composer whose dual training, classical and jazz, is the basis of an unmistakable style that denotes the formal solidity of the first and the extrovert flowering improvisation of the second.

He studied at the Nice Conservatory, recorded his first jazz album at the age of 18 and in 1956 he founded his big band (still active until shortly before his death) with which he revived the "Swing Era" style, also accompanying many stars of the French jet set such as Brigitte Bardot and Juliette Gréco. Claude Bolling thus gains much popularity in Paris but will continue until the end to define himself humble servant of the musical idea of Duke Ellington, Count Basie and Fats Waller, for whom he expresses a sort of veneration.

Gifted with an impressive musical technique; his talent does not stop at the executive level but also continues in the compositional one. He is in fact the author of more than one hundred soundtracks for French cinema and beyond. Among the best known collaborations are Borsalino, Flic Story, California Suite etc.

Proving he has certainly not forgotten his academic training, he revisits various Mozartian compositions in the famous and exuberant album "Jazzgang Amadeus Mozart" and collaborates with classical musicians such as Jean-Pierre Rampal, Maurice André, Yo-Yo Ma and the English Chamber Orchestra for the composition of music that combines classical styles with those of jazz in an innovative way. Recalling other famous pianists such as Jacques Loussier, André Previn or Bill Evans who have revisited the great classics in a jazz key, we hardly find anyone who has composed so much music from scratch by merging the two languages in such an elegant and joyful way.

The Suites for Flute and Jazz Trio (1975/1986)

These are, together with film music, the most famous compositions of Claude Bolling, halfway between chamber music and jazz ensemble. One cannot fail to notice how much they express joy, jubilation and simple and sincere happiness in music; traits that certainly make up the contour of the composer's personality and most of the musical-biographical events and which here transform and decline a sense of positivity in different ways and nuances.

However, the Suites were born from an express desire of Jean-Pierre Rampal - probably the most famous flautist of the 20th century - who initially asked Bolling to compose music that was "classical" for his flute and jazz for any accompanists, given the keen interest he had for this genre: "I adore jazz, without knowing how to play it, but I dream of having an experience with jazz musicians". They were later recorded together with Max Hédiguer on bass and Marcel Sabiani on drums.

The result consists of a cross-over music, which blends different musical languages, in a happy meeting point between baroque, classical, swing and popular, without desecrating their contrasting flavors but gradually enriching them in the different movements of which the Suites are composed (seven the first, eight the second).

For example, in the first piece, Baroque and Blue, a theme reminiscent of a baroque minuet then varies in a blues style and both voices (flute and piano) follow one another throughout the movement, reproducing each other in the form of a real canon .
In the second movement entitled Sentimentale, a very emotional cantabile melody will evolve into a more cheerful and rhythmic tempo. As in Baroque and Blue, here too the solo improvisation is inserted at a later stage, although finely permeated by classical elements often left to the flute.
Javanaise, on the other hand, is a lively time in 5/4 that takes up the waltz rhythm of a dance.
In the Fugace, as the title itself suggests, a tribute to the contrapuntal form is represented so dear to Bach, that although here it is rendered in jazz writing, it retains the energetic divertissments and the typical progressions.
The main feature of the Irish movement is a melody with a tranquil and bucolic character that finds its beauty in its natural simplicity and elegance.
In Versatile the melody is articulated on a bar of mixed meter with two themes, one more melodic and the other more concise, interspersed with interventions of an improvisational swing nature.
In the last movement of the first Suite, the Veloce, the atmosphere is similar to that of a bebop: a rhythm that runs up to an explosive finale full of backbeats and shifted accents supports a theme with a symmetrical and vaguely classical formal structure.

Suite No. 2, composed eleven years later, then demonstrates a further elaboration of these ideas, noting a character that is always very elegant but, if possible, even more rhythmic, varied, exuberant, pressing and modern.

Retracing the Suites, both the modernity given by the versatility of the instruments and musicians (the flute gradually follows increasingly freer patterns) and the heterogeneity of the music are evident which, while freeing itself from the "rules" of the classical form of the Suite which undergoes tempo, of frequent atmospheres and modulations, results in a third musical language with a dynamic but always coherent character.