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Roberto Cifarelli

Roberto Cifarelli loves jazz and photography.

About Me

In all the Italian places in which jazz is played, the figure of Roberto Cifarelli is, for several years, integral part of the scenography. Devoured by an inexhaustible passion, with his presence he communicates joy, serenity, enthusiasm to everybody and for this reason his rare absences are noticed, because till now we are all gotten used to see him with the ever-present camera while he is catching the instants of the creative tension, the emotions that the music communicates him. Cifarelli, 1964 class, has completed the whole run that divides tasteful amateur photos from those of professional photographers and he has done it without losing an ounce of that passion for the music, of that respect for the musicians that it is warned in all his photos, also in those of the apprenticeship years. Years finished in 2002, when in the book “Emozioni, scritti, immagini del jazz italiano”, original in its pagination that combined photos with short notes of the drawn back musicians, he gave us the first one, finished action of love towards the protagonists of that world of sounds that he loves above everything. Since then, Roberto Cifarelli has become a professional of the performance photography but he has not lost the tension that animates the dilettante, understood however as the one who “takes delight” in a qualified way (to the highest level) with an artistic and spiritual phenomenon. In this way, his world of images has found more and more space on the specialized magazines, “Music Jazz” above all, on the covers of books or albums published by great labels as the Blue Note and the ECM, or by resourceful Indies as Splasch, Map, Abeat, Alfa Music, Cam Jazz, Via Veneto. And also in the innumerable reviews that have invited him to expose: from Piacenza to Gallarate, from Iseo to the Brianza, from Vicenza to Udine, Vignola, Ivrea and also Cologne, in German, San Sebastian Spain, Budapest Hungary. Vital and dynamic man, he is among the founders of the first photographic agency devoted to the show (and above all to the jazz), presided by a photographer that belongs to the history of the jazz in Italy: Carlo Verri. He actively collaborates with the musicians both in multimedia projects that put in relationship the music with the image (for example with Rita Marcotulli and Massimo Colombo) and he has conceived Pentafotogramma show, in which he documents in live broadcast the ”pre” and the “during” of artists concerts as Antonello Salis, Enrico Rava, Paolo Fresu, Stefano Bollani, Beppe Caruso, Renato Sellani and Max De Aloe. This narrow relationship, of friendship and knowledge, that ties him to musicians is also the secret of the immediateness of his photos, that out of every formalistic search try, above all, to distinguish not only the photographer but above all the musician and his peculiar gestural expressiveness. Perhaps, for this reason, his images transmit the same heat and the same serenity that you can try staying beside Roberto Cifarelli man.

Publication Emozioni, scritti, immagini del jazz italiano

10 years of shots

collaborates since 2006 with AAJ

by Maurizio Franco (ph Patrizia Meloni)