Interview with jazz Bouncing Trio. An interview by email in writing. 

JazzBluesNews.com: – First, let’s start out with where you grew up, and what got you interested in music.  How exactly did your adventure take off? 

Patrizio Balzarini: – We have different background: Emiliano come from Ciociaria, near Rome, while Luca and Patrizio are from Lombardy, outside Milan; but we all grew up with music, since our teen age. We have studied music in and we have played in different bands of different styles, especially rock and funk. We became interested in jazz music in our twenties; Emiliano went to Frosinone Conservatory, and then lived in Valencia for a while. Luca and Patrizio studied at the Civica school of Music in Milan, jazz department. We start playing together for fun, but then Emiliano and Patrizio started to bring in original tunes, and Luca grew interest in recording and producing, and the band started to evolve.

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JBN: – How has your sound evolved over time? What have you been doing to find and develop your own sound?

P.B.: – Rehearsals and gigs! In these years we had a profitable live activity, in many different contests, from small clubs to music festivals, from pubs to theaters; we put beside original tunes and standard tunes from different genres, chosen depending on the situation, and these practice let our repertory and our comfort zone grow and grow, in terms of quantity, quality and deepness. Initially we played in a more “standard” way, but then we naturally started to look to a band unique voice; this voice is based on common funk and post-bop languages, but mixed in a very personal manner.

JBN: – What routine practices or exercises have you developed to maintain and improve your current musical proficiency, in terms of both rhythm and harmony?

P.B.: – Keep Studying in two ways: maintain our proficiency with practice routines that keep you musically and mentally fit, to be always ready to play at our best, even at rehearsals, where new idea come by, and always look for something new, that keeps our mind awake, both as singles and as a group.

JBN: – How do you keep stray, or random, musical influences from diverting you from what you’re doing?

Emiliano Candida: We are open to many different influences, so we try to include them in our sound; our repertory is very different in styles and sounds, so we always look for new ideas. That said, you need to summarize these influences in a coherent sound for the band, and in our opinion you can do this putting aside personal egos and letting emerge the spirit of the band as it is formed only by one spirit and one mind, and at the end one single voice.

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JBN: – In your opinion, what’s the balance in music between intellect and soul?

E.C: – Everybody must find its own balance in our opinion, but it’s a fact that you need both mind and spirit to form a deep musical knowledge, and body too. In other terms, you need to conceptualize what comes from your soul, and then you need to bring these ideas to a concrete shape. Mind, body and soul are all interconnected, and the three of them must work together; if you don’t have this balance your music will lack in something, and you will always look for something that you will never reach.

JBN: – There’s a two-way relationship between audience and artist; are you okay with delivering people the emotion they long for?

Luca Mazzoni: – Artists need the audience emotion, and to be influenced by the audience, instead it would be a one-way relationship. To find this connections it’s quite difficult, especially at the beginning, and gig after gig you will always need fo find the way to connect with the audience present at the concert. It’s the same, but in a totally different way, with recorded music. You don’t know who will listen to your work, and how, and when, so you need to bring to te record everything you have in terms of emotion, so that it can shine through the music.

JBN: – How can we get young people interested in jazz when most of standard tunes are half a century old?

LM: – Our personal formula is to put beside ancient melodies with something different. In our gigs we can play a straight ahead funk tune to catch the audience, and once you have taken them, you can play everything you want, from a jazz standard to a psychedelic tune. As we had said before, the spirit you play the music with is essential. If you are fair and authentic, if you don’t play as you think somebody else wants you to play, or because “this is the way jazz must be played”, you can catch the audience with your music, whatever it is. As you said the core of this music is half a century old, or more, so you can’t think to get people interested in it only playing with philological accuracy. You can actualize every kind of music by being authentic in what you do.

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JBN: – John Coltrane once said that music was his spirit. How do you perceive the spirit and the meaning of life?

EC: – Maybe this question is too big for us, and we can recall the words of John Coltrane, surely a huge spirit, greater than us.

JBN: – If you could change one single thing in the musical world and that would become reality, what would that be?

PB: – Promoters become really interested in music and musicians.

JBN: – Whom do you find yourself listening to these days?

Hundreds of different artists, so we give only three names: Aaron Parks, Tom Misch, Ivo Neame…

Interview by Simon Sarg

Note: https://jazzbluesnews.com/2023/03/19/useu-jazz-blues-association-festivals/ You can express your consent and join our association, which will give you the opportunity to perform at our Jazz and Blues festivals, naturally receiving an appropriate royalty. We cover all expenses. The objectives of the interview are: How to introduce yourself, your activities, thoughts and intellect, and make new discoveries for our US/EU Jazz & Blues Association, which organizes festivals, concerts and meetings in Boston and various European countries, why not for you too!! You can read more about the association here. https://jazzbluesnews.com/2022/11/19/useujba/