Epitaphs from the Hill

Composers and Bandleaders Anna Bignami and Laura Veltri present their new project: “Epitaphs from the Hill”, performed by the Bignami Veltri Jazz Ensemble. Veltri is a present student and Bignami is almuni from the jazz/pop composition programme at the Academy.

“Epitaphs from the Hill” is an encounter between music and the poetry of Edgar Lee Masters. The collection of poems titled “Spoon River Anthology”(1914) tells the stories of the inhabitants of an imaginary town, Spoon River. These stories are told by the inhabitants themselves in the form of epitaphs, where they finally reveal the darkest parts of their lives; their tales of corruption, bitterness, violence, unreciprocated love, and longing for lost youth, destroy the idyllic image of the American village of the time leaving space to a more crude, realistic depiction. Once dead, the characters tell the hard truth, free from the fake smiles of socially accepted behaviour.

This is arguably a highly relevant issue of today’s society: often, we find ourselves swallowing our negative emotions, for the sake of pleasing our peers, being accepted or because we convince ourselves that, by not addressing our issues, eventually we will make them disappear. Positivity is misused as a tool to hide inner problems, thus merely burying the issues rather than confronting them, according to Anna Bignami and Laura Veltri.

“Epitaphs from the Hill” invites the listeners to quit avoiding their hidden skeletons and to finally work through them, before it’s too late.

The Bignami Veltri Jazz Ensemble is formed by:

Anna Bignami – composer and conductor
Laura Veltri – composer and conductor
Jakob Sørensen – trumpet and flugelhorn
Johan Toftegaard – alto sax & doublings
Kati Brien – alto sax & doublings
Niels Vincentz – tenor sax & doublings
Jakob Rønne Danielsen – baritone sax, bass clarinet
Tobias Stavngaard – trombone
Sebastian Zawadski – piano
Matthias Petri – double bass
Daniel Sommer – drums

Concert supported by Aarhus Initiativpuljen