...Giancarlo Tossani and Big Monitors have created a new sound from my compositions giving them a new life, this is always an exciting treat. Also I enjoyed the original compositions. Getting to the essence of the music; unique arrangements and performances not only of my music but their own compositions. Knots and Notes rises up and takes off. All that we can ask of any musician is to be oneself. This music finds its own voice. A voice that is much needed in this time. Great Job. Thank you for the Music. (William Parker)

...Knots and Notes is not meant to be a simple tribute or homage to William Parker. It is rather a free interpretation, inspired by the work of a tireless musician and composer who is also the bearer of a worldview. After all, jazz is not only a musical form but it is also a microcosm, a form of the world. The knot is a broad, powerful, varied, ambivalent metaphor.
It is intertwining, bonding but also constriction.
It is ornament and beauty but also tangle, hindrance, oppression.
It is a knot between people, a relationship, a complex set of relationships.
In wanting to tie our music to that of William Parker, I believe we can perceive the multiplicity of these aspects.
I want to thank the young Michele Bondesan who some time ago submitted some songs me. Hence the idea of ​​this project was born. Jazz is also this: a knot between generations. (Giancarlo Tossani)

Tobia Bondesan ● alto sax
Gabriele Mitelli ● pocket trumpet, alto horn, modular synths
Giancarlo Tossani ● piano, wurlitzer, virtual synths
Michele Bondesan ● double bass
Andrea Grillini ● drums

Big Monitors, or five brothers in music, and some in blood too, for a very personal tribute to William Parker, a charismatic figure in the world of jazz, a bassist and multi-instrumentalist with the wisdom of a poet. Since the 1980s he is one of the most active musicians in New York, one of the most important voices on the music scene. His talent as a composer has found multiple avenues of exploration: operas, oratories, music, theater, cinema and ballet. Parker is also an author of books and poetry collections and a teacher. For several years, he co-organizer of a cult event such as the Vision Festival in New York.

Giancarlo Tossani. For more than ten years his main project has been the Synapser group with Achille Succi, Tito Mangialajo, Cristiano Calcagnile. He has obtained several awards in the different categories of the Top Jazz organized by the Musica Jazz magazine (including in January 2007, that of New Talent of Italian Jazz), as well as in the JAZZIT Awards Readers Poll (second place in the Keyboards category both in 2016 and in 2017). He has played in several festivals and clubs (including New York's Blue Note). He has had the opportunity to play with numerous musicians including, more recently: Brad Shepik, Ermanno Baron, Ohad Talmor, Jeff Platz, Émile Parisien, Sylvain Darrifourq, Antonio Borghini, Beppe Scardino, Luca Aquino, Tino Tracanna, Rob Mazurek... His latest CD Newswok with Synapser hosts New York trumpeter Ralph Alessi. Recently reissued is Opus Soup, a borderline work between jazz, pop and electronics, and the solo album Strange Spy released by Auand Beats in June 2019. Together with guitarist and musicologist Enrico Merlin he is co-founder of the Molester sMiles group, dedicated to the electric period of Miles Davis and of which the CD Social Music was released in December 2016.
http://www.giancarlotossani.com/

Gabriele Mitelli is the New Italian Talent of the Top Jazz 2017, a prestigious award by the Musica Jazz magazine, based on the vote expressed by a selected list of music critics in the sector. Member for more than a year of the band of Cristina Donà, the trumpet player of Brescia born in 1988, he obtained this important recognition after the publication of three albums. The last, O.N.G. Crash, released in May 2017, was presented on tour as a quintet with American saxophonist Ken Vandermark. He wins the AIR Bando for artistic residencies abroad and in a few years he has played with some of the most important musicians of jazz and border music including Ralph Alessi, Jeff Parker, Rob Mazurek, Markus Stockhausen, Chris Speed, Gianluca Petrella, Simone Graziano, Alexander Hawkins, Giovanni Guidi, Cristiano Calcagnile, Beppe Scardino, Tino Tracanna...
He is co-founder of the RES (Research Heuristics Sonora) Collective, an improvisation collective that includes about thirty musicians in Brescia, Bergamo and Milan. He has been working as Artistic Director for five years, bringing some of the most important names in the world jazz scene to the city and province.
https://gabrielemitelli.wixsite.com/music

Tobia "Bobby" Bondesan. He studied academically at Siena Jazz (Siena Jazz University) with full marks and First Graduate of the prestigious institution. He graduated from the two-year specialist course in jazz music in Bologna with 110 cum laude. He plays with jazz bands and research ensembles, working both with musicians who have made history and with new rising talents. His passion for experimental music led him to found BlueRing-Improvisers, a collective of improvisers active in various Italian cities that earned, with almost ten years of uninterrupted activity, a leading role in the central-northern Italian scene. He has played in numerous festivals in Italy and abroad (Umbria Jazz, Bologna Jazz Festival, CrossRoads, AngelicA, Correggio Jazz, Monkathlon, JazzIt, A love Supreme impro festival, Fonterossa Day, AMM) and has recorded several record works (Big monitors: Knots and notes; Bluering Improvisers: Materia; Fonterossa Open Orchestra: FOOL, The tower jazz composers orchestra; Bluering improvisers: Bluering vol.1; Brotherhood: Oak, Fabbrica5; Gurguburek: Old Postcards). He is a member of various ensembles, from duo to orchestra, in many of which he directs and / or composes, including (as Leader) Brotherhood, Materia, Tobia Bondesan-basement, Pàn ã léåkê, Mulungu, Giovanni Maier / Tobia bondesan Duo, Southern Europe Jazz Group, Nude Pics, Gurguburek, Fabbrica5, BlueRing Orchestra (as sideman) Kairos Orchestra, Fonterossa open Orchestra, Tower Jazz Composers Orchestra, Big monitors, Cercando il Caso Ensemble.
He has played and / or recorded, among others, with Giancarlo Schiaffini, Fabrizio Puglisi, Stefano Battaglia, Giovanni Maier, Antonello Salis, Alvin Curran, Paolo Damiani, Daniele Roccato, Pasquale Mirra, Achille Succi, Silvia Bolognesi, Emanuele Parrini, Greg Burk , David Boato, Alfonso Santimone, Piero Bittolo Bon, Gabriele Mitelli, Glauco Benedetti, Gabriele Evangelista, Francesco Cusa, Massimiliano Sorrentini, Alessandro Giachero and many others.
www.tobiabondesan.com

Michele Bondesan. He began studying double bass at the age of 14 at the Siena Jazz Foundation, with Silvia Bolognesi. He participates in the Siena Jazz Summer Seminars in 2011 and 2014 and approaches the world of improvisation through lessons and masterclasses. He obtained a first level degree in double bass at the ISMM “R. Franci" in Siena with M. Andrea Granai in 2017 (110/110 cum laude) and the second level one (110/110) at the ISSM "Peri - Merulo" in Reggio Emilia with M. Amerigo Bernardi and Alberto Bocini. In the classical field in 2019 he is Eligible and plays with the Italian Youth Orchestra, first in the ranking at the Orchestra of the Teatro Olimpico in Vicenza; in 2020 he is Eligible and performs with the Accademia della Scala Orchestra (two-year period 2020/21) as first double bass. He also collaborates with the Tuscan Conservatories Orchestra, Galimathias Strings Ensemble, Tuscany Regional Orchestra, Senzaspine Orchestra, Bazzini Consort of Brescia. In the jazz field, he performs with Fabbrica5 (3rd classified Conad Jazz Contest), with which he publishes the homonymous album (2016), with the BlueRing Orchestra, with which he records Bluering - Vol. I (2018). He records the album Oak (2019) with the duo Brotherhood. He records the double album Materia (Aut Records 2020) as a double bass player and composer. He collaborates with Tobia Bondesan, Gabriele Mitelli, Giuseppe Sardina, Andrea Grillini, Silvia Bolognesi, Giancarlo Schiaffini, Francesco Orio, Leonardo Radicchi, Francesco Cusa, Davide Bussoleni, Piero Bronzi, Emanuele Parrini, Alessandro Giachero, Achille Succi, Giancarlo Tossani. Together with his brother Tobia he founded Bluering – Improvisers in 2014, a collective of musicians dedicated to improvisation, research and impromptu composition.

Andrea Grillini. He boasts numerous collaborations with various Italian and foreign musicians including: David Murray, Ken Vandermark, Marc Ducret, Bruno Chevillion, Stefano de Bonis, Chico Pinheiro, Daniele Camarda, Fabrizio Puglisi, Antonio Borghini, Stefano Senni, Pasquale Mirra, Tristan Honsinger, Don Byron, Steven Bernstein, Jonathan Finlayson. He participates in numerous festivals both in Italy and abroad, including the Human Rights Nights Festival (in conjunction with the Soweto Art Festival) whose tour touches various South African cities; the Improvised Music Series (Chicago), an event organized by saxophonist Ken Vandermark, with the Luther Blissett Band. He also collaborates with SponkStudios, a collective of videomakers active on the European and American scene in the creation of soundtracks for films and documentaries. With Bad Uok he recorded Enter, a record consisting mainly of his compositions which received wide acclaim from national and international critics. In July 2013 Bad UOK participates in the national competition of Italian conservatories, winning the 3rd prize of the festival and the First Prize of the critics. In 2015, together with the Fuel Quartet group, he won the We Insist MIDJ award (Italian jazz association), as a group of new Italian jazz talents.