Perigeo - Italy's jazz-rock laboratory

Perigeo is the musical project conceived in the Seventies by Giovanni Tommaso, one of the finest Italian double bassists. The lineup – a quintet – also included four other giants of the Italian jazz scene: Bruno Biriaco on drums, Claudio Fasoli on sax, Tony Sidney on guitar and Franco D’Andrea on piano. Tommaso (born in Lucca on 20 January 1941) also deserves credit for modernising double-bass technique in Italy, absorbing the American lessons of the likes of Paul Chambers, Ray Brown and Scott La Faro. In the late Fifties, Tommaso began his career as a musician, playing aboard a cruise ship. Then, in the following decade, he landed in New York, where he made contact with leading be-bop double bassists such as Scott La Faro, Ray Brown and Paul Chambers, who would have a considerable influence on his professional growth, allowing him to refine his technique. Back in Italy, Tommaso was finally able to realise his dream: starting his own group.
Perigeo officially formed in Rome in 1971, when the group signed to Rca. The band put forward a kind of jazz-rock inspired by the electric sound of Miles Davis's “Bitches Brew”. This primordial form of fusion initially met with resistance from jazz “purists”, but soon won over many fans, earning the group invitations to major national festivals, such as the Italian progressive festival in Rome (Villa Pamphili), as well as a series of concerts abroad, especially in England and France.

Their debut album, Azimut, was released in 1972. The jazz roots of the five musicians are already evident, even if the sound comes across as fairly raw and static, both harmonically and rhythmically. The tracks often take the form of genuine piano pieces, using few chords and only sporadic drums and percussion (see, for example, the title track). Some imposing guitar solos characterise “36 parallelo”, while “Grandangolo” is a blend of classic rock and jazz-prog.

We All Have a Blues to Cry, released the following year, proves far superior, both in terms of the musicians' individual virtuosity and the greater complexity and expressiveness of the pieces. This is the record that marks the birth of jazz-rock and jazz-prog, that is, the first true materialisation of the modern techniques Tommaso brought to the table. The curtain rises with the Mediterranean-flavoured “Non c’è tempo da perdere”, which, after an instrumental piano intro, develops into a sung section in five-four time over which a guitar solo creeps in. Some tracks have a more wistful atmosphere. Among them, the title track, introduced by a gentle guitar arpeggio and a handful of chords, and “Nadir”, built on an almost resigned yet emphatic mood, with the sax playing a sweet melody. It's Fasoli's sax again that brilliantly weaves into the guitar parts on “Deja Vù”. But the album's standout track is “Vento, pioggia e sole”, which, marked by a vigorous, modern jazz feel, amply demonstrates the five musicians' skill: it features a succession of powerful guitar, sax and electric piano solos; three distinct moments in which each instrument takes centre stage, with improvisation as the only rule.

1974 is the year of Genealogy, an album more "accessible" than its predecessor, marked by a greater use of synthesizers with the arrival of the moog, played by Tommaso himself. The record is even richer and more varied, with a brilliant blend of musical genres. The rhythms and harmonies take on a more rock-oriented shape, though the band's jazz soul remains very much alive. The driving track is "Via Beato Angelico", which, besides a memorable electric guitar theme, features a Latin-tinged rhythm thanks to the conga drums played by Brazilian percussionist Mandrake. His contribution is also crucial on "Polaris", which opens with a rock rhythm but soon transforms through a sonic explosion of electric piano. That same instrument almost entirely shapes the alluring "Torre del lago", steeped in the jazz spirit of John Coltrane. Other striking pieces include "Old Vienna", a classic fusion of jazz and waltz played in three-quarter time, and the closing "Sidney's Call", made up of several, often dark and melancholic, moods in which arpeggiated acoustic guitars, solos and vocal lines alternate.
The track titles also reveal the places of origin and residence of each band member. Worth mentioning too is the striking black-and-white cover, created by Ren Pearson.
Genealogy earns Perigeo excellent critical acclaim and soon becomes one of the great classics of Italian prog-rock.

In 1975, after supporting Weather Report on a triumphant European tour, Perigeo return to the studio to record La valle dei templi. It's a groundbreaking album, more dynamic and vital than its predecessors, especially in the rhythm section: credit for this goes largely to the contribution of Neapolitan percussionist Tony Esposito. Thanks to his input and the use of the guitar's wah-wah effect, the record takes on funky overtones, adding to its jazz-rock contamination to create what critics usually call "fusion". The impact of this new direction is already evident in "Tamale", which bursts in impetuously from the start, with an intro in which all the instruments play a pentatonic scale, almost immediately followed by a main theme; this alternates with improvised passages, both on sax and electric piano. The title track is also built on a funky base, albeit at a more moderate tempo, following an almost spectral introduction where vocal lines blend with keyboard riffs and vibraphone effects. "Looping", on the other hand, is an evocative waltz-time jazz piece, reaching its most thrilling moment in the slapped, distorted bass. There's no shortage of other intriguing moments either. "Pensieri", for instance, is a relaxing ballad in which the theme is carried first by piano and then by moog; "Cantilena", despite its title, is a pleasant pairing of piano and sax, its harmonic base often built on augmented seventh chords that further soften the atmosphere; finally, "Un cerchio giallo" closes the tracklist with its evocative guitar arpeggio, soon joined by all the other instruments, led by the soprano sax.
La valle dei templi also achieves solid commercial success, establishing Perigeo as one of the finest acts on the Italian rock scene of the period.

Perigeo's jazz-rock period comes to an end in 1976 with Non è poi così lontano, recorded in Toronto, Canada. The album continues to showcase the technical skills of the individual band members, but gives way to more commercial standards. A modest hit of the time was "Fata Morgana", also included on the compilation "Pop Villa Pamphili", a collection paying tribute to the venue that, in the 1970s, hosted one of the most important events in Italian progressive music. There's also no shortage of classic Viennese waltz flourishes, drawn from "New Vienna", a piece that serves as a counterpart to the aforementioned "Old Vienna". A lackluster follow-up to the previous records, the album marks the band's twilight, and they disband that same year.

The band members began devoting themselves fully to careers as session musicians and to numerous outside collaborations, also releasing solo records and teaching at conservatories and other prestigious jazz schools.

In 1980, the five reunited under the name Perigeo Special to make the double concept album Alice, inspired by the life of Lewis Carroll, author of the novel "Alice nel paese delle meraviglie". Alongside fusion and jazz-rock tracks such as "Il quartiere" and "Festival" (recorded live), the record veers toward a refined pop sound, featuring artists such as Lucio Dalla and Anna Oxa on "Tea Party", Rino Gaetano and Maria Monti on "Al bar dello sport", and these and other performers on "Confusione gran confusione".

Shortly afterward, Giovanni Tommaso formed New Perigeo, a band made up entirely of new members: Maurizio Giammarco (tenor, alto and soprano sax, flute and backing vocals), Carlo Pennisi (electric and acoustic guitar and backing vocals), Danilo Rea (piano, keyboards, marimba and backing vocals), and Agostino Marangolo, formerly of Goblin (drums). Tommaso is the lead vocalist as well as the bassist.

At the end of 1980, RCA backed a promotional project with a tour featuring New Perigeo alongside Rino Gaetano and Riccardo Cocciante. The concerts spawned an EP titled Q-Concert, which brought this eclectic lineup, put together by the record label, into the spotlight. Years earlier, Rino Gaetano himself, in the song "Escluso il cane" from the album "Aida" (1977), had spoken of "record-label-arranged unions". An experiment in which he, it seems, felt rather uncomfortable.

In 1981, New Perigeo released the album Effetto amore, now virtually impossible to find, which includes at least a couple of notable tracks ("Mediterraneo", "Bocca di notte").

Although the project was short-lived, Perigeo were without doubt the most successful attempt at fusing jazz and rock to emerge in Italy, thanks to a skillful balance of improvisation and carefully crafted songwriting. This experiment, whose success was down to the technical and compositional skill of its five members, would soon be taken up by various Italian prog bands, such as PFM with "Jet Lag".

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