Riccardo Del Fra, born in Rome in 1956, living in Paris since the ’80s, is a multi-talented musician : a double bass player, arranger, and composer. The years spent alongside Chet Baker, Barney Wilen, Bob Brookmeyer Johnny Griffin, Kenny Wheeler to mention only some of the great names in jazz with whom he has worked, as well as the recordings he has made which have gone down in the history of this music could have incited Del Fra to settle for a high-class career as a loyal, die-hard « sideman » of jazz.
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This, however, is not exactly the direction he chose. He is too much of a vagabond to keep to one path. He is too strongly attracted by different cultures, by different music – contemporary, traditional, and different disciplines – cinema and its music, theatre, teaching, and broadcasting – to allow himself to be restricted to a single route.
Jazz, yes, but not just jazz! This is how the Jazoo project was created, which in turn gave birth to the album Roses and Roots . This is how he composed for the acclaimed Ensemble Intercontemporain and Dave Liebman on saxophone his pieces Sky Changes and Tree Thrills.
How he has composed for the cinema and in particular for the film maker and actor Lucas Belvaux. This is also how he conceived and arranged for his tribute to Chet Baker, My Chet, My Song, with Roy Hargrove and a symphony orchestra.
“Notes are characters, like in a play, a movie or a novel. All musical gesture must have a deep meaning otherwise silence is preferable”. That could be the keyword of his music, spacing from pure simple melodies to chromatic richness, where Riccardo’s bass sings or surrounds, Marc Copland offers his anti-routine piano playing and the legendary Victor Lewis paints the all with light or strong grooves. When they play together, you can hear a story. And everytime is a different and new one.
Source Riccardodelfra.net
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Secret Laughs
