Jazz Evening at the Hilton – 24/05 at 20:00

After JONI, Rossana Casale returns to jazz with a new album and tour entitled ALMOST BLUE, a concept project focused on the blue color and the songs, the words that jazz has dedicated to its deepest meaning.

In common language, blue is the color of melancholy and hope. From the blue feeling comes the blues, the one that has its roots in the songs of the slaves of the cotton fields, in the hope of freedom and revenge. ‘Blues is more than a color, it’s a moan of pain, the taste of conflict, a sad refrain but also a game where life plays’ ( ed. song All blues- Kind of Blue M. Davis 1959).

And it is the blue color, metaphor of spirituality and transcendence, of tranquility and silence, of contemplation, the concept of the new project by Rossana Casale to be released in June 2024 for Egea Music.

“A few months ago, while I was taking a long walk on the sea, on a day of those where you can’t tell how you really feel,” says Casale,“observing the clear encounter between water and sky, I found myself singing the song Blue Skies by Irvin Berlin and consequently to flow with my mind all the jazz songs that within their title or text named the word blue. From the saddest ballads like Little girl blue, who sang Nina Simone on her very first album of ’59 or Am I blue by Ethel Waters, to Almost Blue by Elvis Costello sung by the velvet voice of Chet Baker, Blue in green, mystical song by Miles Davis, to the more abstract songs like Coltrane’s Afro Blue or funny like Dave Brubeck’s Blue Rondo a la Turk that Al Jarreau also brought to success in the 80s by playing on the text itself. I thought of so many. So I came up with the idea of creating a work entirely aimed at dissecting that word so rightly addressed to jazz and the musician that frees her from her prisons that want her only sad. It’s not just that.”

Rossana Casale chooses the songs that jazz has dedicated to “The color of color”, as defined by Miles Davis and creates his new project in-jazz adding the unreleased “Shades of blue”, written with the musician Luigi Bonafede.

A return to the purest jazz, that of Casale, after several years (Jazz in me 1994, Billie Holiday in me 2004), despite the fact that the same jazz has always been home to her albums (Jaques Brel in me 1999, Strani Frutti 2000, Il Signor G e l’Amore 2013, Round Christmas 2016, JONI 2022).

With her, great jazz men with long careers in Italy and abroad, excellent musicians who return from her past and with whom she shared albums and tours.
They are: Carlo Atti on tenor sax, Luigi Bonafede on piano, Enzo Zirilli on drums and new acquaintance, Alessandro Maiorino on double bass.