What if we played Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown) by the Beatles? Maybe we could also add a pinch of Syd Barrett’s flair and the Byrds’ psychedelic melodies. A touch of Jefferson Airplane wouldn’t hurt. A sitar announces the psychedelic storm coming from Quebec… The choice is ours not to protect ourselves from the Elephant Stone’s sonic atmospheric spirals… (All photos taken with FujiFilm X30)
BACKSTAGE. Dietro alla creazione di “MAC”, il nuovo album jazz di Frank Salis and James Andrews exhibiton (curated by Francesco and Gaia Di Gregorio), Lugano, Switzerland, MARCH 24 – APRIL 5, 2024
In collaboration with NicolaSound 2024
VERNISSAGE + SHOWCASE
Sunday, March 24, 6:30 PM
Atelier Cornici e Restauri, Via Luigi Canonica 12, Lugano, Switzerland
There was a risk of making something trite… Taking the photo for the album cover of Frank Salis and James Andrews was an exciting challenge. I wanted to simultaneously convey the depth of New Orleans’ musical history and the Crescent City’s strong spirit of inclusion. The good soul of Dr. John was already present in the title. On a hot summer night I thought about Irving Penn’s shots of the hands of Miles Davis. What if those experienced hands had communicated with other hands eager to learn? While I was thinking about that, I was playing with a necklace from the New Orleans Carnival. Et voilà! EUREKA! The hands of James and Frank seal an artistic partnership between cultures and generations. Their hands are spontaneously sharing the soul of New Orleans. The MAC LP cover was done! Frank liked it immediately: <In my opinion it is a brilliant idea that came out of Matteo Ceschi’s brain, perpetually looking for new ideas. The image can be read in many ways, one of which is certainly the passage of something. I would say more of a passage of culture than a simply passing of the baton.>
– Frank Salis and James Andrews, MAC, produced by Frank Salis and Nicolas Gilliet, NicOLAsound Records 2024 © – OUT MARCH 25TH
(Backstage photography: Vincenzo Del Franco e Nicolas Gilliet, Lugano, August 13, 2024)
Deconstructing David Bowie’s music to reconstruct David Robert Jones’s artistic legacy. Pierpaolo Martino (double bass, tapes) and Enrico Merlin (electric guitar) staged a show inspired by Karlheinz Stockhausen’s example but also by the pure joy of revealing the pop power of Bowie’s music. The spectators’ ears opened up towards new horizons when the duo revived Ziggy Stardust’s epic from those “dismantled elements”: everything that was not clear before is now recomposed and prepared for a sonic understanding. David Bowie was probably watching the performance at La Corte dei Miracoli and nodding his head.
Happy to be part of the fellowship… My b&w frame for The Bluebeaters music-cassette Live in Köln 2017 (by Dirt Tapes) inside sleeve.
Friend Grammy awarded, Offbeat and Big Easy awarded and Latin Billboard awarded composer and HBO Treme trumpeter Leon “Kid Chocolate” Brown from New Orleans at Officina Recording Studio (Switzerland, early February 2020) recording Frank Salis‘s album (produced by NicOLAsound).
Observing a musician during a studio session is a privilege. Recording it… is receiving a precious gift.
It’s all about human frequencies, it’s all about the music. Music. Empathy. And a bit of photography… Staying close to the subject.
Be in style with the human soul… A Different 9/11, a different day… A paper plane… Remembering September 11, 2001… (All frames taken with FujiFilm X30 in Milan, September 10, 2021)
Like in a Spike Lee movie. Sound coming from the street. Sound for the people on the street. Former members of The Jumpers, musicians Tiberio Longoni and Tony Fisher revived the ‘hood with an impromptu DJ set from the windows of the PONKJ bar, not far from The Canal District-Navigli. Roots, reggae, ska, dub, soul, funk and Stax Records classic hits… these are the songs that “rocked” and made the people in town sweat in a hot late afternoon. Music is not afraid of the dark: Tiberio and Tony continued to play records even when the sun went down. Don’t shoot the DJs, the party has to go on!
… Callin’ out around the world / Are you ready for a brand new beat / Summer’s here and the time is right / For dancing in the street…
At the beginning of the live show at Elisabetta Sgarbi’s La Milanesiana, Mirco Mariani, one of the founding leaders of the Extraliscio band, recalled that liscio is the popular music of all Italians: someone in the audience seemed puzzled.
Then, as the band progressed with their energetic performance, that “strange” statement made more and more sense to the Milanese audience: all of us have been at least once in our life in a balera, the traditional liscio dance hall (see Gabriele Basilico’s book Dancing in Emilia).
Looking at Italian musical tradition but at the same time deeply aware of the need to refresh the language of popular music, the members of the band demonstrated how important lessons for the present can always be drawn from the past.
Do I mean that Extraliscio sound like archaeologists?
Certainly not! The Extraliscio are rather like explorers of the contemporary world, ready to prick the Past-Present and Present with punk and world music splinters.
What about the Future?
Take a melting pot spirit into the balera – the Extraliscio’s suggestion!
Often the most interesting frames of a live show or a music festival are those from backstage – I would also include soundcheck-time and the after-show. The spectator’s eye cannot reach behind the stage. Behind the stage the photographer’s curiosity is constantly fed by the “everyday” life of the artists. The backstage-soundcheck set is a discreet appetizer that everyone would like to enjoy… Thoughts, smiles, jokes, technical adjustments, “last calls”… CLICK! (Shots taken with Fuji X100, FujiFilm X30 and Olympus OM-D E-M5)
TELLING WITH MY EYES 