Full house at the Hotel Villa Moorings this evening as Riccardo Arrighini played a selection from his latest series of works based around the music of Giacomo Puccini. A perfect evenings entertainment sitting round the pool watching the stars overhead and listening to the notes floating out from piano of Riccardo. The Barga Jazz Festival 2008 is off and running in style.
“Puccini in Jazz” – this work is entirely dedicated to my father, Francesco “Franz†Arrighini, who left us on last 8th October 2007. His energy, his “moodâ€, his passion and character, and consequently his memory lives in any note of my music: I owe him a great deal if today I am a musician.
He always supported me with his moral contribution, encouraging me to take up this career.
He did not hide the difficulties and all the privations he suffered to allow me to study.
Once he told me: “If you want to be a musician, it’s fine; but you have to do it seriously!†You can’t imagine what it meant to me and to my formation like human being and “musicoâ€, as he used to call me.
When I used to consider me a confirmed pianist, he still encouraged me in front of the difficulties offered by this very selective and cultured kind of music; he often told me that an artist should go only in one direction and that the results would arrive sooner or later (even with white hairs, and I think I have already some!). During his lifetime he did everything: professor in literature and musician, poet and journalist, composer and producer, film reviewer: he was an artist in his mind and anything he did was always carried out in a really creative way.
He had also the passion for the bridge, and people says he was really a skilful player.
I know that between two “ariaâ€, Giacomo Puccini used also to stay with his friends of Torre del Lago around a gaming-table.
So I like to think they are together now while I’m trying to find out the right idea for an arrangement; they are making fun of me, holding a glass and wondering “… Ma vesto vi, alla fine, che vol fa…†(we are all native of Viareggio).
My father had a profound knowledge of the great Maestro, he knew “life, death and musicâ€, according to his own words, because he considered this music like a miracle. I can’t forget when he drove back from Lucca, after the piano lesson at the Conservatory, he used to sing at the top of his voice some very famous “aria†.
Sometimes I remember I was really disturbed by this behaviour, but now I think that in those moments I felt stronger his presence.
Playing music is my best way to remember and to recall him.
Hoping not to be rhetorical, but friendly. I owed it him. – Riccardo Arrighini
In fifteen years of experience in jazz music Riccardo Arrighini has had the fortune and honour of collaborating with internationally famous artists such as: Lee Konitz, Steve Grossman, Irio de Paula, Harry Allen, Joe Cohn, Mark Abrams, Chico Pinheiro, Enrico Rava, Gianni Basso, Franco Cerri, Pietro Tonolo, Giovanni Tommaso, Andrea Dulbecco, Mauro Negri, Piero Leveratto, Massimo Manzi, Massimo Moriconi, Barbara Casini, Fabrizio Bosso, Marco Tamburini, Emanuele Cisi, Stefano “Cocco†Cantini, Giampaolo Casati, Nico Gori, Riccardo Fioravanti, Ares Tavolazzi, Francesco Petreni, Javier Girotto, Patrizia Conte, Daniele Scannapieco, Piero Leveratto, Tommaso Lama and others.
Click on the link below to hear a short section of Riccardo Arrighini – Puccini in Jazz
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