Edoardo Marraffa
Via Fornasini 11
40128 Bologna
Tel. 051-369218

e mail del2758@iperbole.bologna.it

Edoardo Marraffa Solo

by Stefano Zorzanello

EdoardoMaraffa’s music is of a very varied nature, as is the case of most musicians of is generation. This saxophonist was born in Apulia, grew up in Cecina, Tuscany, and now lives in Bologna. He Has worked in Bassesfere group improvisation, in various ensembles, among which the Specchio Ensemble and Vakki Plakkula, which have both been guests of the Angelica Festivals on more than one occasion. Besides this, he has taken part in various initiatives, from the pop that claims to be ecclectic of the Parto Delle Nuvole Pesanti, to the centrifugal pop of the Fraili project, interpreting Paolo Angeli’s "Dove dormono gli autobus", or his partecipation in the folk music of Campania in Cristina Vetrone’s Le Fate (also known as As-Sur-d); equally important is his activity as a free improviser in highly different events (from playing on stage during the Roman festival "Controindicazioni" to the cellars of the late DiTraverso at the Link community centre); the latter activity is perhaps more relevant here since this is his solo work as an impro-composer and because it is on such occasions that the variety of his language as a saxophonist is more evident. If we want to see which trend of contemporary saxophone playing his work belongs to, we can say that Marraffa is one of those who seek a more personal, unexplored sound compared to the customary acoustic and expressive range of the instrument. Yet there is a remarkable lyrical vein in the way he plays; His simple, and apparently modest, language alternates at times with dangerous movements that are the result of an unusual technique, while at other time the lyrical effect is also obtained thanks to this very technique and cannot be distinguished from it. Sometimes, when listening to some saxophone solo concerts, we wonder how far one can go with the instrument in the sense of a search for new sonority and virtuosity ( I already wondered about this when I heard Braxton’s Saxophone Improvisation Series F, or a solo by Luc Houtkamp or Ulrich Krieger just to mention some of the many names); and at times, we Have the impression that the music for this instrument has become distorted search for this extreme plane. However , in Marraffa’s case we do not have to ask ourselves this and we listen to the music even when the musical fabric seems more broken and grating, and the reed seems to be subjected to Sade. Yes, it is quite true, because we can’t see the reed in the player’s mouth and we do not know exactly what is Happening in there when it produces a magical new sound . Unlike a drummer, for whom gesture and being seen are essential to his performance, a saxophonist can dispose of an invisible terrain that reveals itself when it is already a sound . Marraffa knows this and exploits it, producing an extremely varied compendium of sounds, oscillating from the range of accompanying sounds to the basic one, both of an harmonic nature and of an indeterminate type (variations on "deflected" breath, vibration of controlled distortion), over-acute notes lacking the basic one, multiple sounds, rapid jumps from the over acute to the real note, multiple staccatos, microtonal intonation on the note jumped to, intra-tonal glissandos, phantom notes, unusual fingering, and so many other things, which together form what is astonishing in the combinatory capacity of the vocabulary in real time, all in all, flexibility. In his " Findings of my experience with the soprano saxophone", Stave Lacy writes: " the mouthpiece is a boat, the reed is a sail, you are the captain, you control the wind".

Marraffa seems to have taken this aphorism literally and seems to have great fun sailing on the changing tides of improvisation, making crossings on which it is a sheer pleasure to be carried. If , out of organological interest we could be overcurious, it would be necessary to place a probe in this saxophonist’s mouth to find out more about the physics of sound production, or, poor man, we should take an x-ray of him while he is doing a solo (!).

We would perhaps know something more about one technique or the other and everything could be taught more easily and scientifically we would not only have an idea, although undoubtedly partial, of the phenomenon, but we would also come across the famous interaction between the instrument observing and the instrument observed, as if we wanted to find little sources of light in a dark room with a torch: a this point, the phenomenon and its very essence would disappear completely. Philosophically speaking, we would substitute the Platonic Myth of the Cave we the Myth of the Oral Cavity, the mysterious, mystic workshop where the sound of the contemporary saxophone is forged. But rather than turn to the space beyond the heavens to learn where Marraffa’s musical ideas reside, we could go and look for them in a poetics vaguely resembling Coleman’s, when music works on corners and non-Euclid angles, and in a lazy vibrato attitude that seems more reminiscent of Lester Young, when the improvisation becomes an atonal, semi-serious ballad. This is because, in his earnestness, like a statue, almost like a Greek statue with a tenor sax , who for instance, in Vakki Plakkula Trio plays a humorous contralto necessary to counteract the crazy delirium of the other two members, there is always a hidden grin, which serves to maintain the seriousness of the solo, should we wish to see it as a scream, which it indeed is.

This solo as a scream is the result of the above-mentioned techniques, in particular of the use of the over-acute notes inserted and removed quite freely into a melodic flow of sounds that are rarely "standard" , or themselves even become the chain of real sounds". The accompanying harmonic sounds in Marraffa do not follow any fixed pattern of succession but alternate irregularly the closest and farthest intervals between the series of harmonics, forming unforeseeable , fractionary sequences and generating a protean sound that chooses to break apart and multiply itself following the inspiration of the mood of improvisation.

This process of addiction and subtraction, alternation and accumulation, together with the reflection of a true composer about the construction of real formal zones, cannot but be compared with an intensely lyrical song, a solo or a choir, voices that are tormented and torment.

This song contains both the inevitable and the inescapability of need, of urgency and expression, while remaining, however, ever disenchanted, conscious and detached in the face of a world that knows it is on its deathbed, or is perhaps already dead, and for which, all things in all, no lament is sung, but merely sound is sought, where it is still possible to discover some joy and amazement.

• "Passiflora" LP 1990
• "Aucune idée encore" CD 1991
• "suite n° 1 per quintetto doppio" Specchio Ensemble" CD 1995
• "CD Catalogo" Bassesfere (con Specchio E., Caliri Marraffa duo, Impossibili) CD 1996
• "Angelica 95" (con lo Specchio E. e con una formazione comprendente Pat Thomas, Lol Coxhill, Larry Ochs, John Raskin, Luigi Mosso, Chris Cutler) CD 1996.
• "Una barca" Vakki Plakkula (ida 012, 1998), Ai Record, Angelica.
• "Solo" Edoardo Marraffa, Bassesferec BS 005, 2000