The swing of Ezio and Renato Levi

The first Milanese jazz club, the Circolo Jazz Hot Milano – and one of the first in Italy – was located in one of the upper rooms of the current Motta (then the elegant Campari restaurant), in the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele; opened in 1934 by twenty-year-old Ezio Levi, jazz musician and also author of the first authoritative text on jazz – and engineer. Due to the racial laws he was forced to flee to New York in 1938; we then find him in Lima. Just in that year his volume Introduction to real jazz music had been published by Renato Levi – no relation.

We will come to know all their tragic events and the action to make jazz known during the fascist blackout from the voice of Luca Bragalini, musicologist and professor of Jazz History at the Milan Conservatory, Thursday 1 February at 10.30 in the Conservatory. “The swing of Ezio and Renato Levi: stories of music during the Shoah”, with the Verdi Jazz Orchestra, direction and arrangements by Pino Jodice; in collaboration with the Sons of the Shoah Association, for the XXIV Remembrance Day.

You can listen to the live narration-concert on the Sole-24 Ore website.

Narration, of course, because Bragalini will make us discover these two figures. The story will be interspersed with four compositions by Ezio Levi, arranged for the thirty musicians of the Conservatory’s lineup; then from the Canzone della Commessa, which Gorni Kramer recorded with Ezio Levi on the piano; and from Ellington’s Mood Indigo, in homage to Renato Levi, as well as from the Cantico dedicated to him, signed by Pino Iodice. Listening to Bragalini the result of his important research work, begun at a conference on the contribution of Italian Jews to the music of twentieth century, we were also able to focus more on the figure of Renato Levi. From 1933 to 1937 editor of the first Italian monthly discography magazine, “Il disco”, with numerous jazz reviews written by him and Ezio (“Jazz today is art: authentic and indisputable”, writes Renato); a newspaper of a primarily cultural nature.

Openness to the most diverse musical genres

The openness towards the most disparate musical genres, the depth of analysis, the international inspiration and the autonomy of thought (sometimes in open conflict with the fascist regime) are the distinctive features of “Il disco”; they contributed to the development of reflection on phonography, and constituted a model of musical dissemination. Renato is also the owner of a record shop, Il Magazzino Musicale, in Via Verdi 2 in Milan (next to La Scala), one of the few importers of jazz; he publishes, as we have seen, Ezio’s authoritative text. He stands against the blockade of the import of records and culture from America and never abandons his shop. In December 1943 he was loaded onto the infamous Platform 21 of Milan Central Station, to die a month later in Auschwitz.