The Gentle Transgressor

Enrico Rava whispers your house down

A A A Comments (0) By Greg Burk Thursday, Apr 15 2004

Let’s not chain him exclusively to music, either. Please meet Rava the author, who has concurrently published a book, Note Necessarie, which he says is selling. Those who read Italian will get a load of his self-taught connoisseurship of art, share his passion for books, and glean his insights on people, travel and life (not on his women, he takes pains to mention). Naturally, they’ll also find out which musicians he likes — Louis Armstrong, Bix Beiderbecke, Chet Baker and Freddie Hubbard are some of the hornmen — and which ones he doesn’t, though at this moment he doesn’t want to get into that.

“I like almost everybody when they are honest, when they are a true player. I respect anyone who gets to have perfect control on his instrument, whatever his instrument is — can be driving a cab or playing trumpet or being a plumber or whatever. When I was a kid, there were a lot of people around me that worked well. Whatever they did, they loved their work, they were proud of being good at their jobs. While now, I see mostly people not doing their jobs well. For instance, I had some work done in my house, and I had to have different people coming to fix what the other people destroyed. When I see somebody who does the job, whatever it is, with love and with perfection, I’m absolutely in total admiration.”