By Ferruccio Martinotti
“To have seen Italy without having seen Sicily is not to have seen Italy
at all, for Sicily is the clue to everything”. (J.W. von Goethe)
If there's one artist who embodies the layered, cultured, and restless soul
of Sicily, it's Gianni Gebbia. But beware, his musical lexicon is never a
regionalist language, but always an extraordinary, challenging, universal
Esperanto. Born in Palermo in 1961, he taught himself jazz by gaining
experience in numerous Sicilian groups and orchestras and participating in
jam sessions with passing American musicians. Like all men from the islands,
he couldn't resist the call of the Horizon Line, and in 1980 he moved to New
York, where he experienced the "no wave" movement and the last glimmers of
the loft scene. During those same years, he attended the legendary
University of the Streets on the Lower East Side, directed by saxophonist
Muhammad Salahuddeen, before moving to Paris in 1984 to study with
Jean-Claude Forenbach and Alan Silva. In 1990, he performed solo at the FMP
“Total Music Meeting” in Berlin alongside musicians such as Steve Lacy and
Lindsey Cooper, and since 1991, he has collaborated with German
percussionist Guenter Baby Sommer and double bassist Peter Kowald, thus
reuniting one of the most telluric duos of European free jazz. In 1993 he
formed the folk-improv project “Terra Arsa” along with Vittorio Villa and
singer Miriam Palma. In recent years, performances have been frequent
alongside contemporary and butoh dancers (Masaki Iwana, Tadashi Endo,
Antonio Carallo, Julie Stanzak, Yves Musard), poets (Alberto Masala),
videomakers (Salvo Cuccia), film and theatre directors (Raul Ruiz, Roberto
Andò, Jerome Savary, Guido Chiesa, Vanessa Redgrave, Heiner Goebbels,
Aurelien Bory, Stefania Casini, Davide Riondino, Luca Guadagnino, Pina
Bausch), visual artists (Toti Garraffa, Nicola Console, Martha Keller,
Georgina Starr) and circus artists (Francois Chat, Vera Mormino). The
collaborations in the musical field are impressive: Heiner Goebbels, David
Moss, Zu, Otomo Yoshihide, Fred Frith, Anatoly Vapirov, Vladimir Tarasov,
Jean Marc Montera, Dominique Regef, Louis Sclavis, Pino Minafra, Jim O'
Rourke, Lee Ranaldo, Glen Velez, Benoit Delbecq, Noel Akchoté, Antonello
Salis, Sergey Kuryokhin, Henri Kaiser, Michel Doneda, Takaoka Daysuke,
Shin'ichi Isohata, Reiko Imanishi, Garth Powell, Evan Parker, Francesco
Cusa, Domenico Sciajno, Butch Morris, Lukas Ligeti, Elliot Sharp, Shin'ichi
Isohata, William Wynant, Satoko Fuji, Dominique Regef, Benoit Delbecq,
Lawrence Butch Morris, Wadada Leo Smith, Milford Graves, to name some.
Gebbia's ongoing projects in recent years include “Trionacria” alongside Roy
Paci on trumpet and Francesco Cusa on drums,“Switters” with Francesco Cusa
and Vince Vasi, and “Zen Widow” with Californians Garth Powell and Matt
Goodheart. His solo work has continued steadily since 1990. In 2011, he
played with Eiko Ishibashi, both in a duo and a trio with bassist Daniele
Camarda. In 2013, he formed a new band, “Magnetic Trio”, with which, for his
own label “objet-a”, he reinterprets all the compositions created from the
1980s to the present, as a sort of compendium of all his musical
experiences. In 2020, he formed the open project "The Fruitful Darkness”,
which features Massimo Pupillo and Tony Buck. In 2024, as “The Mayfield”
(Heiner Goebbels, Willi Bopp, Cecile Lartigau, Nicolas Perrin, and Camille
Emaille), he released an extraordinary album with Intakt Records. In recent
years, he has begun studying and using Indian bansuri flutes in his
performances, and he cultivates his study of Indian music, having attended
courses with the renowned Maestro Hariprasad Chaurasia and his students
Debopriya and Suchismita Chatterjee. This interest led to the solo albums
“Vapor” and "Calor”, where Gebbia primarily uses the bansuri flute, and the
same occurs in Petrichor. Titled with a neologism that combines the Greek
words "Petra" (boulder, stone) and "Ichor" (sap), referring to the scent of
rain on dry earth, the album unfolds across 11 tracks, all under three
minutes, suspended between ambient atmospheres, micro-variations of sound,
and sensorial perceptions. The textures of Indian wind instruments and
electronics play with Eastern influences without folkloric shortcuts or
implausible xerox-effects, but rather through a unique interpretation by
someone who has embraced those cultural styles in their soul, even before
than in their musical technique. In a single track ("Metabolico"), Gianni
returns to the soprano saxophone, while the 11 minutes extended bonus track
("Zazeela") pays homage to Marian Zazeela (April 15, 1940-March 28, 2024), a
New York-based artist and musician, member of the experimental music
collective "Theater of Eternal Music," known for her collaboration with her
husband, composer La Monte Young. For those who dug Shabaka's shakuhachi
period but a really great record per se.