- December 13.2010 Rome. interviewee by Nartaradioroma before the concert " Blue performance" at the season " Jazz at theater". Intervista_NartraRadioRoma vs Alessandro

 

- June 8.2008 Rome. Excerpt of the interview made by Lost Highways for the debut of the album Astrolabioanima.

THE INSTRUMENT FOR NAVIGATING THE SOUL

By Valentina Di Cecco.

 ………For me, improvisation is never abstract; it should always sing or design rhythmic shapes that then become my propelling strength. Do you know the movie Hero? The duel on the water… those scenes represent what improvisation means for me: to dance, leaping into the air, drawing shapes, then coming down and leaping again… So it’s a meeting of matter and wind on water, an element I can’t live far away from.

 ………. Music is a language that communicates things the rational mind can’t conceive of. Since the mind isn’t capable of recognising the message of music, it also can’t distort it in any way, and that makes music go directly to the soul. That explains the emotions, the tears that spring to the eyes, the joy rather than sadness that listening to music provokes.

 I think photography is your second expressive medium, after music. You’ve gathered plays of light and dancing reflections, the enchantment in a beam of light and the sorcery revealed by rays that cross and refract. Eight shots captured the twinkling of a star projected and distended on the wall by the metal of your saxophone. One of these poems written with light is the face of ASTROLABIOANIMA. Why this skin exactly?

 Astrolabioanima is a meeting between two beings who play and dance, and the whole of existence seems to be a game of reflections, a dance of reflections. Just by slightly changing point of view in space or time, things seem to change in nature or disappear altogether. It is a continuous flow, and that shot immortalised two reflections, an encounter in the fluidity of movement between light and matter, captured in one camera shot. In the same way, my meeting with Giovanni in Bellagio can be read as a reflection within a flow beyond music, composed of light and matter, light and shadow. An instant, immortalised using phonographic support. There were many “coincidences” that led to the birth of Astrolabioanima. It certainly wasn’t an a priori decision on anyone’s part. It happened, just the way the silver of my saxophone met the ray of sun and projected it onto the wall

 You don’t just compare yourselves with the other arts. You communicate with the Other in the broader sense. You have touched, and allowed yourselves to be touched by, cultures and places, by echoes and people. Your personal projects are also made up of this; you both have several…

 I think an innate curiosity is another element of my encounter with Giovanni. Yes, I’ve had many experiences with the Other, urged on by the curiosity to know, and this lets you achieve the ability to play while listening to someone else. Perhaps this is one of the keys to explaining the ease of dialogue between Giovanni and me. In the same way, I have an easy, instinctive dialogue with Anupam Shobhakar, the youngest Sarod Master of all time. In a few days time, he will join me from India. We’re working on Orange Sunset, a project that began in Mumbai, more or less like ASTROLABIOANIMA. But this time my travelling companion expresses himself at very high levels through classical Indian music, and what happens is that we can communicate in complete freedom – I European, he Indian – without distorting the ancient and extraordinary values of classical Indian music.

 Roots can provide, or be, the force that nourishes the walking and the pilgrimage, the journey and the flight. I think of your Incanto (concept album dedicated to Lake Como) and Spasimo di Sollima (music for the church of Santa Maria dello Spasimo in Palermo… theatre, leper’s hospital, poorhouse, hospital, venereal disease clinic, a place of wounded faith, a nest of memory). I can sense in both of you a strong relationship with the land, home, origins and roots. I sense it becoming music, overflowing to become art…

 I began to be emancipated from my places very early on, from Bellagio, the magnificent pearl of Lake Como, a corner of paradise….

Only years later did I realise how those places, those waters and those mountains, which I tried so hard and so early on to escape from, had contributed in a fundamental way to forming the man I had become. I became particularly aware of how that extraordinary natural beauty that had surrounded me in my teen years had given me an exceptional imprinting that then resurfaced again in my music… In my search, the study of sound was fundamental, the essence of musical language. Then I went backward to retrace the roots of musical expression. But I didn’t study theory, but rather did practical research, developing immediacy and instinct. I have a huge, deep respect for all musical traditions; they are deep roots, and the further they are from my culture, the more they stimulate me. I like to measure myself against them, fly on them, sing or tell stories with my instrument. My latest encounter was with classical Indian music, the one before that was with Pakistani Qawwali, with the great singer, Mahmood Sabri. For me, roots are a source of stimulation and creative energy.

 

January 2009. National Geographic magazine. Fr.

Event:  Silence and Music in Tunisia 06/11/2008

Excerpt from "Concert at the foot of the dunes" by George Pics.

Sunrise over the Sahara

…..The sun needed an accompaniment during its rise beyond the horizon; Alessandro Gandola, the Italian saxophonist, took it upon himself to celebrate this event. The notes of the sax, articulated as the darkness turned to the reddish light of the Saharan morning brought a shiver of delight.

The magic of notes from the blue

…Guja Mabellini, … her voice made the angels’ wings unfurl; notes seemed to take flight, immersed in the blue. High above, the saxophonist Alessandro Gandola received her message to the gods and responded. The dialogue was sweet, often nostalgic; the sax, occasionally tonal, seemed to give strength to the voice, to Guja’s prayer.

The sun had left the sky when the last notes were lost once more among the stars that began to appear overhead.

 

ASTROABIOANIMA album's  review

- May 2008.World premiere of Astrolabioanima in the tunisian desert.Extract from the Rolling Stones magazine review "THE SOUND OF SILENCE" by Fabio Schiavo.

 To introduce their latest work, Giovanni Sollima and Alessandro Gandola were looking for a place where even the rocks sang. They found it in the desert.

The wild idea was to have them perform in a non-place that would convey the sense of their latest album, Astrolabioanima.

….In the desert, sounds become sensations that can evoke a kind of symphony… the cello, the sax and the rocks are not mere objects that sound, they are parts of one, vibrating universe…Alessandro explains, “Everything needed to be bare, basic and immediate, but at the same time melodic, rich and profound. It was meant to make you reflect and lose yourself, and at the same time help tune in to something ancient…

 

- April 9.2008. Excerpt from "ENCOUNTER" by Giuseppe Attardi (il corriere di Sicilia)

……Gandola and Sollima are like two Michelangelos transported by a creative impetus to discover sounds, grasping ideas and inspiration even from the space that surrounds them.

 

 - May 2008. By Velntina De Cecco

Giovanni Sollima and Alessandro Gandola are musicians and instruments, men fused with their instruments; they are the horizon of a journey, the voyagers and the voyage, its own possibility…they open or lacerate dimensions, they go inside, they follow them to the most extreme boundaries to challenge the limit, to reduce it to nothing, they elevate the worlds they travel and they remain full of energy. The encounter between the two artists nourishes a dialogue that is a constellation of “composed improvisations”. The music of those who seize the stars is indeed made up of improvisations and compositions; it’s an improvisation that reveals itself to be composition and vice versa, it’s the simultaneous occurrence of idea and form.

 

-  DOWNTOWN Music gallery preview

… This fine Italian duo recorded this gem at home in Alessandro's house. There is something earthy and just right about this duo. Giovanni uses his voice on occasion just to punctuate with odd sounds. The fragmented melodies are often charming and memorable. The melodies seem to come from folk tunes and had me humming along instantly. The combination of cello and soprano sax sounds perfect on this disc as the blend is consistently warm and enchanting. For me, this is magic music, music to bathe in and forget about the trials and tribulations, the confusion and stress of everyday life. It feels like the sunshine coming through the clouds on an overcast day. No I say more? I think not." – BLG

 

- April 16.2008 SOUNDS IN THE DESERT By Riccardo Piaggio ( Avvenire)

 It’s hard to say whether this projects approaches world music, more than improvised or Baroque music. Like all real journeys, it’s an open diary, light but not to be taken lightly. That’s the way the sound begins, recorded live at home using a Dat, completed by the breathing of the two musicians and even a few coughs. As if to say, what you need to make music is ideas and professionalism, not necessarily big production machinery. ….“Astrolabioanima” is like sailing the open seas without a compass, where saxophones and violoncello become a small orchestra of voices, strings, winds and percussion, navigating shoals and currents, and recounting a journey filled with surprises and encounters. As with Crêuza de mä and Bach’s Chorales, Steve Lacy and Philip Glass, and the gypsy and sufi musical traditions.

 

 

- 2004 “UN SOFFIO D’ANIMA” by Alessandro Casellato

“A virtuoso jazz saxophonist, a native of Bellagio, and the pride of Como for improvisational music… “A Puff of Soul”, this performance marks Alessandro’s return to solo concertising, following a pause of four long years because of health problems, now completely resolved. His last performance in fact was in June 2000 at the Conway Hall in London, not a casual location for this sensitive author and interpreter. During his career, which began in 1990, he has matured artistically and professionally beyond the average…in ’98 he released “In Meditation”, played on artisan-made instruments. Another fine work is “Urgente” under the name of “Magma Trio”, in the footsteps of the free jazz of Coleman and Barbieri, the evocative “A Musical Journey”, a concept-album of “environmental” jazz in the ECM style, dedicated to Lake Como, and “Darbary”, a single with rhythmical arrangements and Middle Eastern vocalises. Along with the rest of his discography, it elevates Gandola to the highest level of European jazz artists.”

 

- 2003/2004 concerts review of  “FANA” international world music band  ( Alessandro Gandola director)

“Music that hovers between mysticism and contemporary colours, a fresco in which purification and asceticism meet and conflict with animal instincts and passions; a structure in which the archaic iteration of RAGAs and tradition QAWWALI songs open to improvisation, complex arrangements and jazz influences, or the refinement of pop-rock…. It’s an explosive mix of ancient and modern, of austere psalmody and electronic inspiration, of medieval poems and titillating current events, the latter captured by the noir archives of ECM, the esoteric shelves of New Age (only the best, of course), the glossy pages of Anglo-Saxon pop or the immortal, expressive mood of European and American schools of the most introspective jazz.” (Giampaolo Rizzetto, IL CANTAUTORE 2003)

“... 1500 people, literally spellbound...”            (L'Arena di Verona 2003)

”... special mention should be made of the indubitable artistic value of a group of musicians from all over the world, who share sound technical training…” (Taranto Sera 2004)

 

- 1996 “URGENTE” (first  album)

 “Refinement and suggestion abound in Urgente… the urgency really seems to come from a desire to match skills with the most mature artists of contemporary jazz, by choosing a direct path of energy and expression without boundaries. (JAZZ 1996)

 - “…present some of the most startlingly original jazz in Italy” (Secolo XIX 1996)

 - “There is passion, discipline and intellectual honesty” (C.D 1996)

 - “There’s a vocal force that comes from the late John Colytane, but without mannerism and Coltrane imitations, There’s imagination, courage in silence and density in open space” (mi.m) 1996

 

- 1992 concert in DUO with singer Silvia Infascelli

“Hidden delights, pleasant surprises for an audience that is too often accustomed only to reassuring journeys with music they’ve already heard: it sometimes happens that live music programming offers moments of extraordinary interest. This happens when, with a bit of courage, one chooses to give previously unknown musicians a chance, and in unusual formulas… a really noteworthy concert, in the risky, open formula of a jazz duo. On the “Acquario” stage in the historic centre, Silvia Infascelli and Sandro Gandola, singer and saxophonist, took a fascinating chiaroscuro journey to the heart of jazz and improvisation… Classic, difficult themes, from Monk to the sombre “Somebody Special”, the title of a record a few years back by Tiziana Ghiglioni, with thunderous applause at the end of the long set.”

(Guido Festinese, IL LAVORO/La Repubblica 1992)