Stefano Di Battista
Jazz
La Dolce Vita is more than just a film title; it is a gateway to a whole other world. A world of silver-screen fantasies, but also one of life, passion, style, desire, beauty and dreams, which emerged during a unique period in Italian history, and which have continued to resonate through the decades, right up to the present day.
Stefano Di Battista decided that the time had come to bask in this resonance and create an album that combined the brilliance of the great Italian music of yesteryear with the need to keep it alive, scintillating and eternal. The album aims “to explore some of the extensive and wonderful Italian repertoire from the ‘Dolce Vita’ years onwards and bring it to the attention of today’s global audience”, Stefano Di Battista explains. “These compositions epitomise Italian culture and the skill of our great composers, drawing both on what was undoubtedly Italy’s golden age and on the legacy of those years that lives on inside us today”.
Nino Rota’s incredible composition – which lends its name to the album and instantly transports us to a boundless fantasy world – therefore sits alongside Paolo Conte’s Via con me and Nicola Piovani’s legendary La vita è bella. There are pop songs, like the amazing Una lacrima sul viso, written by Iller Pattaccini with lyrics by Mogol and turned into a hit by Bobby Solo, and an operatic echo in Lucio Dalla’s now classic Caruso.
“Taking on the past made us feel very small”, Di Battista concludes. “That music contains a level of artistry that seems very difficult to achieve nowadays. But the process of reviving these works, ensuring they can thrive in today’s world, gives us real satisfaction. This means I want to savour them; I am happier when I play and I have more fun. And I can explore inside them: they give me space to improvise, to invent, to forge a connection with my roots and my Italian culture, but also to look beyond. Because even when they were first written, these pieces – with their melodies, their captivating chromaticism and their joy – were never provincial, they never had borders”.
Born in Rome, saxophonist Stefano Di Battista came to jazz through the records of Art Pepper and Cannonball Adderley. Encouraged to move to Paris by pianist Jean-Pierre Como, who heard him during the summer of 1992 at the Calvi Jazz Festival, Di Battista quickly found his footing in the French capital.
Di Battista's highly acclaimed album for Blue Note Records "Round About Roma" with a symphonic orchestra conducted by Vince Mendoza is "an exquisite work of music that engages the mind as well as the heart" (All About Jazz). Di Battista followed up with another two albums for Blue Note Records: a tribute to Charlie Parker Parker’s mood , and the virtuosic Troubleshootin'.
Stefano Di Battista is a master of sound and melody, virtuoso in his improvisations and authentic in his approach to the song. Three years after his first record on Warner Music Morricone Stories, he now returns with La Dolce Vita.
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