Since the 1970s, Italian Jazz in the world has had an ambassador of excellence: Enrico Pieranunzi. Now Marcella Carboni with her electroacoustic harp pays homage to contemporary Italian jazz by reinterpreting the music of Enrico Pieranunzi.

For this special project one of the greatest interpreters of his music, the virtuoso and poetic clarinetist Gabriele Mirabassi, will be involved.

The Marcella Carboni trio is an atypical jazz trio, which features a harp instead of the piano or the guitar. In this project she is joined by two pillars of Italian jazz, Paolino Dalla Porta on double bass and Stefano Bagnoli on drums. This trio places the harp in a role that goes beyond the stereotypes associated with the instrument.

The primary feature of the trio is a continuous exchange of roles: harp, double bass and drums merge into a single sound, then as three soloists talking, then again in a perfect interplay to underline melodies or biting grooves. As the leader Marcella Carboni writes in the liner notes of their debut album This is not a Harp: “It’s definitely not the angelic, magic, relaxing harp that usually finds room in our collective imagination. So this is not a harp – it’s my voice, my sound. It’s an instrument that can scratch, swing, groove. Sometimes it’s alienating, yet still smooth and full.”

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