"Now, that's Jazz!"

Dado Moroni is a master, Reggie Johnson was a senator, and Peter Schmidlin was certainly a lord. Three eminences added and amplified for an almost telepathic understanding that was augmented even more by a long-standing friendship. They were therefore destined to get along like three peas in a pod!

Together, they had already done some great things, sometimes occasionally in a trio but, more often, having supplied to a panoply of high-flying soloists a dynamic, creative, unwavering, and above all – swinging support! Because the key word to describe the music of this trio and that of this irresistible pianist that is the Genoese Dado Moroni, is without a doubt, "swing!". But not the kind that fixes you onto a slightly dated canvas or into awkwardly narrow formulas. No! We’re talking here about a musical state of mind approached with a hedonistic appetite, a vibrant intention to breathe a swing into it that delights the senses and makes one dance from the inside in a kind of irresistible ‘ants in yer pants’ way ...

Egardo “Dado” Moroni is a special case. One of those people who managed to turn a childhood weakness into a great adolescent force, and then an impressive adult power. Often left to his own devices in a very unsettled and solitary childhood (due to the family’s traveling trajectories), young Dado, while struggling to establish lasting bonds with friends who changed all too often, chose early on in a sort of voluntary isolation, to dialogue with his most constant friend: the family piano! It was to it that he confided his sorrows, his desires and his hopes, groping in an increasingly astounding way as he made his musical discoveries. Because little Dado clearly had a gift that was quick to reveal itself, and blossom. Twiddling the keyboard in all directions to reproduce what he heard on the radio or in the family record collection, in a way as if in an autistic attitude, the budding pianist persisted in an attempt to reproduce note for note the interpretations and solos of his first pianistic idols, inevitably Fats Waller, Earl Hines, Teddy Wilson, Erroll Garner or… Art Tatum! In the case of the latter, this implies extraordinary mental and technical capabilities if we dare to attempt the confrontation and comparison with the virtuoso of virtuosos…

In any case, this particular path of apprenticeship, which could be seen as the ultimate challenge, can only be profitable if one seeks, beyond mimicry, an understanding of the internal articulation as well as that of the movement and idea of the phrasing of the instrumentalist whose work we choose to reproduce. All this with the firm will – at least in Dado’s case – to be freed as quickly as possible from these influences that could prove as confining for him as they were enlightening. Understanding these choices and intentions is at the heart of his art: offering an infinite palette of these means of expression to which Dado doesn’t hesitate to recur when he wants to invoke the legends in a conscious play of memory and affectionate quotations, while at the same time being vigorously inscribed among the panorama of the greatest contemporary pianists.

Coming from a proud tradition of Italian pianists who are among the best in the world, from Franco d’Andrea to Enrico Pieranunzi, Dado Moroni is also lucky to come from a country that really understands what it means to “sing”. This famous spirit of the “canzonetta” gives wings to the slightest of his interpretations and lends them a natural weight and lyricism that simply feel – good!

Perhaps it is also this weight of History, assimilated with patience and intelligence, that has made a gargantuan list of “Great Names” in Jazz want to call upon his talent, starting with his first international engagement with the Swiss trumpeter Franco Ambrosetti in… 1979! Dado was seventeen years old and from then on, he who had started playing professionally at fourteen would collect honors and musical successes without interruption, even sharing the ivory with the most illustrious pianists on the planet, immutably dumbfounded and then delighted to discover a partner with whom they could dialogue so brilliantly.

In July 2009, Dado Moroni’s trio was on the bill of a small festival that we organized at the Hôtel de la Longeraie in Morges, very close to Lausanne, Switzerland. The director of the establishment, Franz Gilliéron, was an especially dedicated Jazz lover. The weather was perfect and the music to match! Dado had chosen an indisputable program, sprinkled with the “oldies but goodies” that have always been part of his repertoire and that are all vehicles conducive to transcendental improvisations. What strikes you immediately is how at every angle of each tune there’s this extraordinary vivacity and these infinitely melodic-harmonically rich inventions that seem to spring from the pianist’s head and fingers in an uninterrupted flow of ideas.

Naturally, the presence of double bassist Reggie Johnson and drummer Peter Schmidlin gives an imperial foundation to the ensemble and allows the pianist the wildest flights of fancy, he who loves nothing more than launching into instrumental pyrotechnics when the mood rises slowly but surely... as in their version of "Just One Of Those Things", a tour de force as exhilarating as it is rhythmically overwhelming!

Since that blessed evening in July of 2009, Reggie and Peter have sadly left us. We wanted the disc you have in your hands to be published first and foremost as a bright memory and grateful tribute to two musicians we loved, but also to bear a symbolic number within the collection that Peter Schmidlin and I had chosen to create back in 1994, exactly thirty years ago, on his own TCB record label: Swiss Radio Days Jazz Series.

This record is thus the 50th volume of this collection and, as Peter said when he came off stage that lovely July evening, with a smile from ear to ear and an eye that sparkled as much as each of his 4/4s: “Now, that’s Jazz!”

Yvan Ischer
Producer-Journalist
RTS-Radio Télévision Suisse
Swiss Radio Days Jazz Series Consultant