Jazz Borders by Claudio Bonadè

Jazz Borders was born from the need to explore jazz beyond what’s usually seen as its natural limits. We’re used to splitting music into genres, but we try to break down or get around those limits.

I started my career in the seventies playing in some major Italian prog bands — Circus 2000, Living Life, and Arti & Mestieri. I have also toured with pop and melodic singers like Claudio Villa, De Gregori and Bertè, and I’ve played a lot of classical music too. The need to go beyond genres comes from my own personal experience.

I wrote the tracks for Jazz Borders over the past two years, while some of the ideas for the previous album Blowin’ In The Wind were born back in the seventies.

I have a lot of musical influences, from Leoninus and Perotinus, the inventors of polyphony, all the way to Satie, Debussy, Ravel, Stravinsky, and Shostakovich, and everything in between, starting with Bach and Handel. Then there’s jazz saxophone with Hodges, of course Parker and Cannonball, Dolphy, Trane, and up to today with Berg, Brecker, and Potter. There’s also prog music with Gentle Giant, Emerson, King Crimson, and Colosseum, the rock with Led Zeppelin, Grand Funk Railroad, and Deep Purple. I even like World Music. I could write a book about this.

Because they’re two instruments whose sounds, in my opinion, blend really well since they’re in different octaves. Plus, thanks to Luca Begonia’s incredible technique, they can even play in unison in the same octave, becoming really powerful like in the track Jazz Borders or sweet like in ‘Assolutude.’

Because when I compose, I imagine in my head a continuous dialogue between the different sound layers, Gualtiero Maragoni’s bass and Emanuele Francesoni’s piano often interact with the wind section’s theme with their own parallel theme, and Fabrizio Fiore’s drums highlight the key passages. This way, everything blends into a very intricate but tight structure, creating what I think is a really original sound.”

We chose this name because we all have pretty complex, unusual, and totally non-conformist personalities, and that really comes through in the way we play. We’re still used to making every decision together, even though the band carries my name and plays my music.