'A jazz musician is a musical thief'

The small repertoire for classical clarinet players led Gabriele Mirabassito the jazz route, writes Ray Comiskey

Twenty years or so ago, when Gabriele Mirabassi was studying clarinet at the conservatory in his home town of Perugia, students taking up the instrument faced limited options, regardless of talent. Orchestral work, certainly, but what was there for a soloist?

Mirabassi is a friendly, direct, highly intelligent man, with a sense of humour, endless curiosity and few illusions about music, or anything else for that matter. He solved the problem by plunging into the austere realms of contemporary classical music, serialism, 12-tone music and all.

A less likely origin for the warm, sunnily lyrical playing which has made him a significant performer on the diverse European jazz scene would be hard to imagine. So why did he go that route? "I was very fascinated with contemporary music," he explains, "because I play clarinet and the classical repertoire for this instrument - it's marvellous, but very small. So I couldn't figure out \ to have a whole lifelong career playing" - he pauses for effect - "only three masterpieces. And a couple of other pieces, but that was all. And I found that in the field of contemporary music the clarinet had a sort of renaissance and you could invent, more or less, your way of playing in order to extend the possibilities of the instrument."

He did that to great effect. After graduating with honours in 1986, he founded a contemporary group, L'Artisanat Furieux Ensemble - the name is somehow revealing - which functioned for six years, during which he gained recognition as an important interpreter in that idiom. He played with other European ensembles and performed under the baton of such distinguished names as John Cage, Gunther Schuller and Jurg Wittenbach until the early 1990s.

He says that this experience paid off in ways that have benefited his subsequent jazz playing. Contemporary music is very demanding; the instrumental training is diabolically difficult and it also calls for great rhythmic freedom and flexibility.

But surely jazz, which he also loved, and played at gigs in Perugia as a student (on piano; his teacher said jazz would ruin his clarinet embouchure) hardly offered as many opportunities at that time as contemporary music? There were some musicians - Louis Sclavis in Europe and Don Byron in America - who were reclaiming and re-inventing the instrument for jazz, but examples were thin on the ground.

"In German there is a very nice word, Zeitgeist, the spirit of the time," he answers, "and it's very curious that the clarinet at the end of the 1980s was involved in this zeitgeist. And there were a lot of people all around who were doing it without knowing each other." Especially in Europe? "Yes. Probably, because I think that one of the main characteristics of this instrument is its chamber music heritage. And I find that now, the way of composing and thinking about a new way of improvised European music goes more and more in the direction of chamber music, where clarinet is a very useful tool.

"Of course, before, starting with the bebop revolution and then with the free jazz era, clarinet was not so prominent, because mainly you had to play very loud, which is not the best \ you can do with the instrument. I mean, with a saxophone it's much easier and works better," he laughs. "And also, the colour of the clarinet sound. It's much more intimate, and so it can be used when you have to express another kind of feeling instead of just aggression and violence."

Mirabassi's move into jazz was gradual. Eventually, in 1991, he met the then little-known French accordion player, Michel Galliano. They hit it off, both musically and personally, and on the spur of the moment, set up a duo studio date. "We had a great recording session and the CD \ came out and all of a sudden, after less than two years, Galliano was starting to become a shooting star and this record we did for fun in Italy got great exposure."

The success of the CD brought the duo to the attention of established jazz musicians who "began to realise I existed in Italy and that the clarinet could play this kind of music, and they started to call me", Mirabassi explains. "And then one day I woke up and realised that jazz had become my job, my daily life. I hadn't any contemporary music gigs any more. I was playing with jazz players." Among them were the remarkable French tuba player, Michel Godard, and another virtuoso accordion player, Luciano Biondini. Together they make up the trio Mirabassi will lead on his tour of the Republic for Music Network.

It's no coincidence that the three musicians are also in the quintet led by the Lebanese oud player - the oud is a stringed instrument, a musical cousin of the lute - Rabih Abou-Khalil. Abou-Khalil is an adventurous musician whose work typifies what is now happening in European jazz, as does Mirabassi's trio. Their music, with its echoes of folk, North Africa, the Near East, Italy and France, could be loosely called Mediterranean. It's a description he readily accepts. "What I'm trying to do is sound specific; to do Afro-American music, if you want to call it that - I don't know any more what jazz as a word means - but to do it in a way with a strong flavour of our local provenance. Jazz music to me is not a style; it's not a kind of music. It's an approach to music."

Given the diversity of the European musical heritage of folk, jazz, classical and contemporary - and especially its ethnic or cultural differences - Mirabassi concurs that European jazz musicians are better placed than American ones to explore fresh options. "You know, I think that the main characteristic that we have and the Americans don't are borders. Here you cannot drive for more than seven hours without crossing several borders, with people who speak different languages, or dress in another way, a completely different nature, climate, mentality. And this is a daily experience. European."

The cultural diversity available in Europe is a fortunate circumstance for artists there, especially musicians. And it's exemplified, he feels, in Rabih Abou-Khalil's quintet; one is American, one is Lebanese living in Germany, one is French and the remaining two are Italian. "We have so many things in common," he adds, "but mainly we are completely different, radically different, and these influences are part of a daily experience. And the more I go on and travel and meet people everywhere in Europe, the more I discover my own identity."

He admits that, after what he calls the philosophical precision of contemporary classical music, defining jazz worried him for a long time. "But, after 20 years, now I'm very relaxed about it." And he points out that the ethnic and cultural melting pot which created the conditions that spawned jazz in America over a century ago is no longer the same. Jazz musicians have to raid some other cultural cornucopia for inspiration nowadays. "A jazz musician," he says, "is a musical thief."

Mirabassi denies the ideology that calls jazz music Afro-American music. "Of course there were African elements, but in terms of quantity the European influence was much bigger. The African thing - it's like the paprika on the spaghetti, you know. If you put one small pinch of paprika in a plate of spaghetti, the whole plate, which is 150 grammes of spaghetti, tastes as paprika, but the quantity you eat is 150 grammes of pasta." He may smile at the analogy, but he means it. And as for the taste of the musical dish his unique trio will serve here, it's a safe bet there will be more flavours than just paprika - or even spaghetti.

• The Music Network tour by the Gabriele Mirabassi Trio begins in Castlebar today and continues in Dublin (tomorrow), Newbridge (Wednesday, October 15th), Tinahely (October 16th), Cahir (October 17th), Kilmallock (October 18th), Monaghan (October 19th).