Roberto Bonati ParmaFrontiere Orchestra: Si erano vestiti dalla festa

"Si erano vestiti dalla festa"—They had dressed up for the party. In August 1922, citizens of Parma barricaded the city against a planned assault by Mussolini's blackshirts. They resisted valiantly and repelled the fascists. No fascist passed that day. A few months later, in October, King Victor Emmanuel III appointed Mussolini prime minister. The heroes of Parma were not forgotten and their bravery is embedded in Parma's popular history.

Roberto Bonati and his orchestra chose to celebrate their sacrifice in 2024, a century after the events. It is surely no accident that they have done so at a time when the country once again has an avowedly fascist prime minister. For Bonati, the citizens of Parma did not fail, despite the fascists' final victory, and they cannot fail as long as we take their courage on ourselves and act against tyranny. Whether Bonati is an optimist or a pessimist we do not know, but suspect the former. Either way, Gramsci's words are pertinent, "I am a pessimist because of intelligence, but an optimist because of will."

The above perhaps suggests a programmatic intention on Bonati's part with Si erano vestiti dalla festa. Bonati certainly does appear to seek to represent musically the street battles that took place in Parma in 1922, notably on "Marionette nere." The latter title translates as "black puppets" or better "black stooges," the word "black" referring here to the fascists' attire. The track is pivotal, after all, to the suite, appearing at the mid-point of the record. It opens with a repeat of the massive discord that peppered the opening track, "Prelude," but here it is twisted into a sneer. One hears martial drums but there are also moments of quite gorgeous lyricism on "Marionette nere" that suggest the need for a less narrow interpretation of Bonati's compositional goals.

In a way, the gorgeously lyrical "Oltretorrente" seems to delineate Bonati's aims with this record. It was this Bohemian district of Parma that saw much of the fighting and the citizens of which drove the fascists back. Bonati's primary intention may well have been to celebrate the courage and dignity of those who said, "They shall not pass!" "Barricate" features an interview with Orazio Bortesi, a protagonist in these events, and a poem by Guido Picelli, sung beautifully by Giulia Zaniboni, as well as fine solos from Daniele D'Alessandro on clarinet, Ingrid Berg Mehus on violin and Michael Gassmann on fluegelhorn. It is in these and other solo and collective voices that one hears the citizens of Parma, who risked their lives in defending their communities.

That life-affirming sense of celebration is heard even more strongly on "Vincenti per tutta la vita" ("Victorious for all their lives") and "Arditi" ("The daring ones"). Roberto Bonati is one of the most important composers in jazz today. He writes music that matters, and in the ParmaFrontiere Orchestra he has the perfect vehicle for his visions of what contemporary jazz composition can be. As the rousing anthem, "Arditi," soars to a close led by Zaniboni and the tenor sax of Riccardo Luppi, it is Bonati's triumph as well as those who stood shoulder to shoulder, women and men, in Parma in August 1922.

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