Music Reviews

Most people are familiar with the traditional diatonic harmonica’s long, wailing notes and chords on blues and country songs. Yet there’s another version of the instrument that allows the musician to tear through three octaves of sharps and flats. Once cherished in jazz, classical and folk circles, the chromatic harmonica is disappearing from the musical landscape, and Enrico Granafei is one its few remaining masters. Granafei was born and raised in the Italian region of Calabria region, and as a young man took an interest in guitar. “I enrolled in a classical guitar course at the conservatory,” Granafei says from …

New Orleans, 1919. The cobblestone streets are filled with fancy carriages as well as carts pushed by vendors, many of them Italian American, selling fresh fruit, shrimp and oysters. As gas lanterns light the nighttime streets of the French Quarter, a new music is being born. Part ragtime, part blues, part march music, it’s called jazz. Decked out in high-collared shirts and dark suits and with their hair slicked back, Cosimo and the Hot Coals transport audiences back to that magical time when a new sound was born in New Orleans. Based in Milan, the band regularly performs throughout Italy …