il manifesto
‘Roberto Laneri, complessità intellettuale’ commends Massimiliano Scatena’s interpretations and the attractive live ensemble versions, highlighting the combination of composed writing and improvisation.
Read the review ↗ — il manifesto
Da Vinci Classics
Arrigo Cappelletti, Daniele Patumi, Giancarlo Schiaffini, Giuppi Paone, Massimiliano Scatena, Paolo Zampini, Roberto Laneri
Physical Release: 30 May 2025
Digital Release: 13 June 2025
13.76€
Digital programme · 15 tracks
Track timings refer to the digital edition.
Giancarlo Schiaffini, composer-trombonist-tubist, was born in Rome in 1942 and graduated in Physics at the University of Rome in 1965. Self-taught, he appeared as soloist in the first free-jazz concerts in Italy and subsequently presented his own compositions widely in the mid 1960’s. In 1970 he studied at Darmstadt with Stockhausen, Ligeti and Globokar and formed the contemporary chamber ensemble Nuove Forme Sonore. He also worked with Franco Evangelisti in 1972 and has since collaborated with the Gruppo di Improvvisazione Nuova consonanza until 1983. In 1975 he founded the Gruppo Romano di Ottoni performing Renaissance and Contemporary music. He is member of the well known Italian Instabile Orchestra. He taught at the Conservatorio “G. Rossini” in Pesaro, “A. Casella” in l’Aquila and at the Summer Courses of Siena Jazz (instrument, improvisation, composition). He plays Contemporary Music, Jazz and Improvisation in concerts and International Festivals of Contemporary music and Jazz like Teatro alla Scala, Accademia di S. Cecilia, Biennale Musica di Venezia, Autunno Musicale di Como, Settembre Musica di Torino, IRCAM, Upic and Festival d’Automne (Paris), Reina Sofia (Madrid), Ars Musica (Bruxelles), Europa Jazz Festival du Mans, Jazz a Mulhouse, Tramway (Rouen), Wien Modern, Aspekte (Salzburg), Donaueschinger Musiktage, Moers, UNEAC (Cuba), Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, Lincoln Center and Hunter College (New York). Mr. Schiaffini has collaborated with John Cage, Karole Armitage, Luigi Nono and Giacinto Scelsi in various performances and works for solo trombone or tuba have been dedicated to him by Scelsi, Nono, Amman, Alandia, Dashow, Villa-Rojo, Renosto, Laneri, Guaccero. His music has been published by BMG, Curci, Edipan, Ricordi. His treatise on contemporary trombone techniques is published by Ricordi, “E non chiamatelo jazz”, about improvisation, “Tragicommedia dell’ascolto”, “Immaginare la musica”, “Errore e pregiudizio” by Auditorium Edizioni.
Paolo Zampini
Nato a Pistoia, ha compiuto gli studi di flauto traverso a Firenze sotto la guida di Mario Gordigiani e Roberto Fabbriciani. Da oltre 40 anni svolge attività concertistica sia come solista che come componente di importanti orchestre ed ensemble: “Sinfonica della RAI” di Roma, “Roma Sinfonietta”, “Roma Group”, “Solisti dell'Accademia Filarmonica Romana” e “Orchestra Nazionale Santa Cecilia”.
Dal 1985 è stato uno degli interpreti preferiti del M° Ennio Morricone, eseguendo in concerto i suoi film e musica da camera. Sempre con il Maestro romano ha realizzato numerosi CD e DVD ed eseguito concerti in Austria, Francia, Belgio, Inghilterra, Germania, Norvegia, Repubblica Cèka, Polonia, Israele, Stati Uniti, Spagna, Giappone, Corea del Sud, Siria, Portogallo , Russia, Lituania, Georgia, Brasile, Cile e Messico. Ha inciso per Edi-Pan, Rai Uno, Mediaset e Tele Montecarlo. Dal 1980 è stato docente di flauto traverso nei seguenti Conservatori Statali: F. Cilea di Reggio Calabria, L. Refice di Frosinone e L. Cherubini di Firenze, Istituto di Alta Formazione di cui è stato Direttore dal 2015 al 2021.
Arrigo Cappelletti was born in Brunate, near Como, on 12 February 1949. After graduating in philosophy and teaching in Italian high schools, he devoted himself to jazz. His discography includes thirty recordings. Samadhi, Reflections, Pianure, Terras do risco, Trio in New York and Mysterious have contributed to an Italian approach to jazz characterised by lyricism, introspection and connections with other musical cultures.
His festival appearances include the Como Jazz Meeting (1976 and 1996), Rapallo Festival (1984), the Italian Jazz Festival at Capolinea in Milan (1986, 1987 and 1989), the Seventh International Jazz Festival Città di Milano (1988), I suoni del jazz in Pavia (1991), the jazz festival at Palazzo Butera in Palermo (1991), Pori Festival in Finland (1991), Sanremo: l’altra musica (1993), Jazzitalia in Verona (1994), Noto Jazz (1996), Lisbon Expo (1998), Sete Sóis Sete Luas in Portugal (1999), Clusone Jazz (2000), Jazz & Wine in Gorizia (2000), Le voci del jazz at Milan’s Auditorium (2003), Iseo Jazz, Siena Jazz and Ecojazz in Reggio Calabria (2004), Villa Celimontana in Rome and Siena Jazz (2005), Novara Jazz (2007), Sant’Anna Arresi and Padova Jazz (2009), Udin&Jazz and Iseo Jazz (2011), and the Chiasso International Jazz Festival in Switzerland (2013).
In Italy he has played with Gianni Cazzola, Sergio Fanni, Paolo Dalla Porta, Roberto Ottaviano and Gianni Coscia. His international collaborators include Barre Phillips, Lew Soloff, Mike Mossman, Daniel Schnyder, Hämi Hämmerli, Bill Elgart, Olivier Manoury, Steve Swallow, John Hébert, Bruce Ditmas, Ralph Alessi and Mat Maneri. He has also collaborated with Mia Martini and Giorgio Gaslini’s national jazz orchestra. In 1988, Cadence included Reflections among its ten best recordings of the year.
His work in Lisbon brought him together with Custódio Castelo, Jorge Fernando and Alexandra in a project connecting fado and jazz through twentieth-century Portuguese poetry. He has also worked in Russia with singer Polina Runovskaya.
Active in jazz education and writing, he is the author of Il profumo del jazz (ESI, Naples), a book combining teaching and autobiography; Paul Bley: la logica del caso (L’Epos, Palermo), translated into English by Greg Burk and published by Véhicule Press in Montreal as Paul Bley: The Logic of Chance; and Le avventure di un jazzista-filosofo (Arcana). He has taught jazz at CDM and Nuova Milano Musica in Milan, the Civico Istituto Musicale Brera in Novara, and the conservatories of Sassari, Alessandria, Reggio Calabria and Venice.
Daniele Patumi is an Italian double bassist whose work spans jazz, improvisation and contemporary concert music. He studied in Perugia and was a member of Pago Libre from its foundation in 1989 until 2003. His collaborations include John Wolf Brennan, Pino Minafra’s Sud Ensemble and Roberto Laneri’s Memory ensemble. He appears on Laneri’s Songs of Middle Space and in the ensemble recordings included in Songs of Surrender.
Giuppi Paone received her musical training in Italy during a period of intense cultural activity. Exploring a variety of vocal techniques and forms of expression, she sought a personal synthesis of her interests: jazz improvisation, the technical discipline of classical singing, Indian raga, the vocal traditions of rural Italy, other traditional vocal practices, contemporary music, the relationship between voice and gesture, and vocal teaching.
By the time of Winds of Change in 2017, she had collaborated with Roberto Laneri for more than twenty-five years, lending her voice to his multifaceted music. Her teaching work has included jazz singing at the San Pietro a Majella Conservatory in Naples.
Massimiliano Scatena
He trained musically at the ‘A. Casella’ Conservatory in L'Aquila, the Eesti Muusikaakadeemia in Tallinn and the ‘Liszt ferenc’ Academy in Budapest. He specialised with musicians such as Aldo Ciccolini, Balázs Szokolay, Ferenc Rados, François-Joël Thiollier, Angela Hewitt, among others.
He has won numerous piano performance and chamber music competitions. An eclectic musician, he has always turned his attention to a vast repertoire, ranging from the music of Bach and Scarlatti to compositions of our time; piano works have been dedicated to him and there are several first performances by living composers.
Parallel to his work as a soloist, he carries out an intense chamber music activity: Significant in this regard are his collaborations with artists such as Alessandro Carbonare, Gabriele Geminiani, Francesco Dillon, Alexey Zhilin, Andrey Baranov, Matteo Liuzzi, Theodora Geraets, composers Michael Riessler, Sidney Corbett, the Camerata Italica orchestra, the Ensemble Modern Frankfurt, and the Dutch NSO orchestra, to name but a few, in locations such as the Santa Cecilia Auditorium of the Parco della Musica, Auditorium of the Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore in Rome, the Hungarian Academy in Rome, Auditorium of the Barattelli Concert Society Park in L'Aquila, Sala dos Espelhos in Lisbon, Auditorium of the Chopin Academy in Warsaw, Kissterem of the Liszt Academy in Budapest, Kossuth Klub in Budapest, among others.
He dedicates himself with great passion to teaching; he is the founder of the international Summer Campus for further education ‘Ambient'Azioni Musicali’, which since 2010 has offered intensive specialisation courses with high-profile teachers in various locations in central Italy.
He was a piano teacher for pre-academic courses at the Conservatorio ‘Santa Cecilia’ in Rome.
Roberto Laneri is a composer, wind player — clarinets, saxophones and didgeridoo — and overtone singer. He studied philosophy in Rome and music in the United States, receiving a PhD from the University of California, San Diego. His teachers included Lejaren Hiller, Charles Mingus, William O. Smith, John Silber and Keith Humble.
After many years of work in contemporary music, his music has developed beyond established categories and conventional boundaries of time and place. His recording credits include collaborations with Charles Mingus and Peter Gabriel, alongside his own albums Two Views of the Amazon, Anadyomene, Memories of the Rain-Forest, The Tail of the Tiger, Sentimental Journey, Escher, Breath and Winds of Change.
He has published two books on the theory and practice of overtone singing, La voce dell’arcobaleno and Nel cielo di Indra. He has been a member of the Club of Budapest, founded by Ervin László to promote planetary consciousness. He taught at the Florence Conservatory until 2011.
Roberto Laneri is a composer, wind player — clarinets, saxophones and didgeridoo — and overtone singer. He studied philosophy in Rome and music in the United States, receiving a PhD from the University of California, San Diego. His teachers included Lejaren Hiller, Charles Mingus, William O. Smith, John Silber and Keith Humble.
After many years of work in contemporary music, his music has developed beyond established categories and conventional boundaries of time and place. His recording credits include collaborations with Charles Mingus and Peter Gabriel, alongside his own albums Two Views of the Amazon, Anadyomene, Memories of the Rain-Forest, The Tail of the Tiger, Sentimental Journey, Escher, Breath and Winds of Change.
He has published two books on the theory and practice of overtone singing, La voce dell’arcobaleno and Nel cielo di Indra. He has been a member of the Club of Budapest, founded by Ervin László to promote planetary consciousness. He taught at the Florence Conservatory until 2011.
The music on this CD contains all of my music for solo piano, three pieces of which also appear in a version for piano and instruments. The first music I listened to as a child was mostly piano music from the Romantic period (Chopin, Schumann, Schubert, Brahms), followed by jazz greats like Jelly Roll Morton and his “Spanish tinge”. To this day that kind of rich sonority remains the most satisfying writing for the piano in my mind’s ear, and perhaps that’s the reason why these pieces sound so different…
The music on this CD contains all of my music for solo piano, three pieces of which also appear in a version for piano and instruments.
The first music I listened to as a child was mostly piano music from the Romantic period (Chopin, Schumann, Schubert, Brahms), followed by jazz greats like Jelly Roll Morton and his “Spanish tinge”. To this day that kind of rich sonority remains the most satisfying writing for the piano in my mind’s ear, and perhaps that’s the reason why these pieces sound so different from most of my music or, for that matter, from most of contemporary music.
Needless to say, all the music in this CD is written, except for improvisations by Arrigo Cappelletti, Giancarlo Schiaffini and myself in the ensemble versions.
I want to thank Massimiliano Scatena for having worked hard and long to music which proved more difficult than I had imagined.
Anusathi’s Minute Waltz was written in 1972 as an exercise on the use of the German augmented sixth chord in a theory class at SUNYAB.
Variazioni su tema d’aria is a theme with very few variations.
In den Juli nächten is a notturno d’estate without anguish.
Imaginary Crossroads and Sonora Crossroads were written in California when I was a Ph.D. student in San Diego, which accounts for the Spanish feeling.
Song of Surrender, the title track, is an unashamed tribute to the golden age of the piano.
L’ouverture is built around a short phrase from one of Bach’s Orchestral Suites, declined with Spanish feeling.
Cechov groups various pieces written as incidental music to a theatre production.
Selected awards, reviews and interviews. Radio broadcasts and podcasts are listed separately below.
il manifesto
‘Roberto Laneri, complessità intellettuale’ commends Massimiliano Scatena’s interpretations and the attractive live ensemble versions, highlighting the combination of composed writing and improvisation.
Read the review ↗ — il manifestoL’Isola che non c’era
The Arcipelago Jazz column ‘All’incontrario andiam…’ discusses Scatena’s solo-piano recordings and singles out the historical ensemble performances with Laneri and his collaborators.
Explore the coverage ↗ — L’Isola che non c’eraOndaRock
‘Epifanie armoniche’: a wide-ranging interview with Roberto Laneri on sound, composition and overtone singing, including his discussion of the piano works collected in Songs of Surrender.
Read the interview ↗ — OndaRock
