Its a bitterly cold January evening with a vicious wind coming down off the snow covered mountains towering over the city and whistling unstoppable through the more less empty streets of Barga Vecchia but as you turn the corner into Piazza Salvi there is a welcoming light shining out from Aristo’s bar and the sound of muffled music.
The window into the bar is all misted over but once you open the door, the heat and the sound hits you together – the place is writhing with people.
Its Sunday evening at Aristo’s bar and the musicians are making the most of it.
Sunday evening has become the night where a growing band of musicians practise and perform an ad hoc jam session for the regular customers in the bar. (article here) Anyone is welcome to join in and the music played ranges right across the board from traditional songs through to jazz, swing, blues and even sometimes rockabilly. Rockabilly at Aristo’s ? ok maybe I am exaggerating slightly but you do get the drift – anything goes.
This evening three guitarists, mandolin, clarinet, rhythm section and three female voice vocal section all joined in and within minutes the place was steaming hot and jumping.
As often happens the odd guest pops in to join in the fun. Three newcomers this evening from different ends of the scale and cultural backgrounds but all fully imbibed with the joy of singing and enjoying life to the full.
One local grown – Elio Togneri, the brother of the greatly missed outsider musician Silvano Togneri, showed everybody tonight that Silvano was not the only one in the family with poetry in their veins.
The others – Pio Marasco and Gretchen Rhodes- a couple from what is probably a far more exotic place than Buvicchia as they both hail from Haiku in Hawai.
Pio Marascho’s expertise is mixing and producing deep house music, steady beats heavily influenced by the funk and soul-infused dance music of late 1970’s disco. His passion for travel has exposed him to an international range of musical influences. He’s lived on Maui for most of the last 20 years, but his early DJ days found him in his hometown of Napoli, and took him raving across London, Ibiza and Germany as well as partying on the underground techno scene in New York City.
Pio makes his music with his partner Gretchen who is a singer. Together their music is a combination of soulful gospel and blues-flavoured vocals over high-energy house music
In addition to her high-energy performances with Marascho, she’s also a vocalist for Mick Fleetwood’s Island Fever band.
Tonight she sang a duet with Geoff Collins-White with the backing of the assembled Aristo musicians.
As to why these two were in Barga ? …. we would have to look in the direction of Andrea Guzzoletti and his eveneightrecords company (site here) All lips are sealed at the moment but word in the piazza is that Gretchen is recording some tracks with Andrea for the up and coming release of his latest work … two years in the making and still highly secret … watch this space for more details.
Click on the link below to hear what the atmosphere was like tonight in Aristos bar …. be sure to listen right to the end as the last part is Elio Togneri singing an Eric Clapton song like you have never heard before in your life – guaranteed
