Carol Sudhalter

CUNEO_70[1](2)VANNA Review 2010 LA  STAMPA DI CUNEO:    Concert Review

by Vanna Pescatori,   Tuesday, February 23, 2010

Translation followed by original Italian version:

“Slender, almost willowy, a cascade of curly hair and a face lit up by a contagious smile,
Carol Sudhalter gave the audience of the Jazz Club of Cuneo a very special evening on Monday. Opening with the notes of a Duke Ellington standard, the New York-based saxophonist/flautist  moved nonchalantly from wailing to smooth tonalities, in a palette of musical shadings.

“I am happy to be here, in a beautiful room with wonderful food” – she said after the first tune, addressing the audience in perfect Italian. “I am in Italy touring my recent CD, “The Octave Tunes”.
“I would like to set the sax down, but I’m not sure in what city I left the stand”.

A ‘flash’ on Carol’s dash around the country: she arrived in Cuneo Monday from Verona; tonight she will play in Milan. Enrico Sanna tells us he met Carol some months ago in the U.S. through mutual friends, and invited her to the Jazz Club of Cuneo. “She managed to find a free date, between one concert and another”, he explains.

Everyone knows that Monday is not the best day for a musical event, yet in the club on Via Santa Croce there wasn’t a single empty seat. Jazz lovers didn’t let this opportunity get away: the chance to meet a virtuoso of sax and flute who comes to Italy twice a year. One hopes – and Carol led us to believe – that, having learned the way to Cuneo, she will return. In answer to the question of whether it is rare, in the States, to find a woman saxophonist, she replied that it is not at all so, especially among the younger generations. “I began to play at age 32, when my father, a saxophonist, died.”

“I began flute first, at age 20. Prior to that I played piano”. Alternating tunes from her CD with other standards, accompanied by Beppe Bima on piano, Francesco Bertone
on bass and Enrico Bigoni on drums, Carol presented the audience with the gift of her favorite tunes, from “My secret love» to «I follow in love too easily», some on sax, some on flute, and (including) Jobim’s bossa nova “Look to the Sky”: “…it’s such a gorgeous piece, that I don’t even know where I am when I play it”.

Slanciata, quasi filiforme, un caschetto corto di capelli ricci e un viso che s’illumina per il contagioso sorriso, Carol Sudhalter ha regalato lunedì, al pubblico del Jazz Club di Cuneo, una serata molto speciale, iniziata sulle note di uno standard di Duke Ellington,
che la sassofonista e flautista newyorkese ha interpretato passando
con disinvoltura dalle tonalità grintose a quelle morbide, in una tavolozza
di coloriture musicali.

«Sono felice di trovarmi qui, è una sala bellissima e si mangia molto bene
– ha detto dopo il primo brano, rivolgendosi agli spettatori in un perfetto
italiano -. Sono in Italia per presentare il mio ultimo cd ‘’The octave tune’’.
Vorrei appoggiare il sax, ma non so in quale città ho lasciato il supporto».

Un «flash» sulla corsa nella penisola che Carol sta facendo: è arrivata da Verona,
stasera suonerà a Milano. Enrico Sanna ha raccontato di averla incontrata
qualche mese fa negli Stati Uniti, attraverso comuni amici, e di averla invitata
al Jazz Club. «È riuscita a trovare una data libera, tra un concerto e
l’altro», ha spiegato.

Alternando standard ai brani del
suo cd, Carol accompagnata da Beppe Bima, al pianoforte, Francesco Bertone
al contrabbasso e Enrico Bigoni alla batteria, ha regalato al pubblico i suoi
brani preferiti, da «My secret love» a «I follow in love too easily», ora con il sax,
ora con il flauto, fino alla bossa nova di Jobim «Look at the sky», «un brano così
bello, che quando lo suono non so neppure dove mi trovo”