Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Photos: Aleš Podbrežnik
Location: Ljubljana / Slamič / Slovenia
Concert date: 08.01.2014
Attendance: 150
Ticket price: 10,00€
Mike Sponza is the man who put Italian blues on the world map through sheer persistence. A highly regarded and respected blues visionary, he has been tied to Slovenia and our musicians one way or another throughout a 30-year career. His gigs on our soil are no surprise either. Most recently, Mike played the Jazz Ravne festival last April with Chicago blues veteran Bob Margolin.
Trieste native Sponza actually came to shake up Slovenia’s post-New Year’s sleepy capital. At Kavarna Slamič, on the corner of Kersnikova and Gosposvetska, he had already played a dress-rehearsal gig the day before, meant for a closed circle of the band’s closest friends. Lara Baruca played that one too, alongside special guests Vid Jamnik and superior jazz guitarist Primož Grašič. The next day, the real, official concert day, which was (let’s hope) widely advertised in the media, Lara Baruca had to cancel her appearance because of urgent family obligations. Slamič was completely sold out that night! The café’s Red Hall is a cozy space with excellent acoustics, more than ready to give itself over to the audience’s intimate communion with sounds of organic refinement. It suits a whole host of acoustic acts, from cabaret chanson, ethno, folk and singer-songwriter music to all sorts of jazz and blues formations.
Mie Sponza played with his backing band, which has long been represented by drummer Moreno Buttinar, bassist Mauro Tolon and saxophonist Matej Kuželj. On stage with them were also Vid Jamnik, an exceptional vibraphonist from the young guard of Slovenian musicians, and of course the man who back in the day preferred to put a guitar under his head instead of a pillow, the one and only Primož Grašič. Both Slovenian musicians have worked with Sponza in the past one way or another, and Sponza and Grašič have been good friends and collaborators for years. Most recently, Grašič wielded the conductor’s baton for the orchestra that accompanied last year’s concert by Mike Sponza and Cetral Euorpean Orhcestra in the middle of Trieste, as part of the Barcolana Music festival on 10.10.2013. The audience that night was the cream of Slovenian music veterans, the ones who got Slovenian rock and pop on its feet especially during the seventies. One of those eminent guests was Benč, who worked with Sponza on the 2007 release »Mike Sponza & The Central Europe Blues Convention«.
The concert, split into two parts with a 20-minute break in between, offered a repertoire of original music, with a few blues standards mixed in. The original idea was for a string quartet to join the musicians, which would have been a stripped-down version of what went down on Trieste’s main square last October, and where Sponza’s new CD/DVD comes from, due out officially this month. But Jamnik and Grašič, as special guests, were more than enough.
Vid Jamnik on vibraphone boldly thickened up the sonic picture of the concert all night, and got two or three spots to really stretch out in improvisations, while Primož Grašič, a pure-blooded jazz guitarist, had to literally rein in his fingers so he wouldn’t accidentally »blow up« and fly all over Kavarna Slamič. Primož is a musician who handles every situation in music-making so deftly that his playing takes your breath away every single time you watch him! This time was no different. With jazzy variations fitted to Mike Sponza’s blues forms, he carried Sponza’s music to dimensions it had never experienced before. Even though Mike Sponza was the master of the house that evening, it was actually Primož Grašič, as a special guest who wasn’t even on stage the whole concert, who slowly, intentionally or not, »stole« the show from Sponza. Plain and simple. Grašič is just so damn good, and when it comes to jazz, few guitarists in Slovenia can rival him with any dignity. Softness, control, an incredible contrast between solo escapades and sensual refinement! Sponza is certainly a guitarist cut from different cloth, and comparisons are out of place. The two guys complemented each other vividly in their starkly different approaches to guitar playing. A top-notch collision of blues and jazz experience!
With his retro-sounding semi-acoustic RIckenbacker 330/12 and Gibson ES 335 guitars and his stage pals, Mike Sponza whipped up an exceptionally organic, juicy musical suspension, with infectious content from a noble weave of blues-soul-jazz elements. Given that Sponza constantly works with a whole gang of different musicians and shows up on stage in different formations, whether as an acoustic duo, a punchy blues rock trio, as the Blues Convenction (that night at Slamič), or surrounded by entire orchestras and vocal soloists, his original music always takes on a different character, genre-wise. This time, of course, the original material was thoroughly enriched with jazz.
The repertoire, grounded in Sponza’s manly vocals, delivered originals at the concert such as Is This Love, Fire, Running On Empty, It’s Hard To Be On The Road, Beauty Queen, You, Kakanic Blues, I Don’t Know, Innocent Criminal, Anxiety,… The only thing missing was a cover of Elvis Presley, Sponza’s great idol, who would have been celebrating his 79th birthday on the very day of Sponza’s concert at Slamič. Judging by the dark glasses Mike wears on stage, his other idol is perhaps Roy Orbison.
A gorgeous evening of excellent music-making flew by in no time. Italian blues citizen of the world Mike Sponza remains a hot, crusty bread roll who delivers on stage exactly what the listener came for. A one-of-a-kind organic musical blend that spoils even the most demanding and attentive ears of music gourmets.
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