Jazz World Live Series promoter Clarence Chang's deep love of contemporary Italian jazz has inspired him to bring many of its leading lights to Hong Kong to perform. Past visitors include pianists Enrico Pieranunzi and Danilo Rea and trumpeter Enrico Rava.
Three more significant figures from Italy's lively jazz scene are performing in Hong Kong as part of the Jazz World Live Series 2014, starting this Tuesday with what Chang describes as an "intimate" solo recital by pianist Giovanni Mirabassi at the agnes b. Cinema in the Hong Kong Arts Centre.
"With Enrico Pieranunzi as his early inspiration, Giovanni represents a new generation of lyrical Italian jazz," says Chang. "His solo piano CD Avanti! is regarded as one of the landmark albums in European jazz."
Born in 1970 in Perugia, Mirabassi received his jazz education in Italy, working with trumpeter and singer Chet Baker among others. He has been based in Paris since 1992 and is as much a part of the French jazz scene as the Italian. He made his recorded debut in 1996 with the album En Bonne Et Due Forme, but Avanti! (forward in Italian) was his first album as a solo pianist. It won two French awards: the Django D'Or for best young talent and a Victoires Du Jazz.
The album's songs had revolutionary themes, ranging from Sergio Ortega's El Pueblo Unido, an anthem of resistance in Chile under Pinochet to John Lennon's Imagine, and included music from France, Italy, Spain and South Africa.
Avanti! greatly increased Mirabassi's popularity, particularly in Japan. However, this led to much of his recorded catalogue on the Sketch label being bought by Japan's Atelier Sawano, making it unavailable in Europe except in the form of highly priced imports.
In protest against this, Mirabassi says he entitled his most recent album, released in 2011, Adelante! - "forward" in Spanish. "I have chosen this title to cock a snook at the Japanese who have unscrupulously bought the catalogue which comprises Avanti!, to which I have no more legal rights. I have been dispossessed of my work, in the name of so-called free enterprise," he says.