Gian Maria Dossena · Il Sole 24 Ore · 5 July 1987, p. 19.
This young woman is twenty and plays trumpet and flugelhorn beautifully, with great inventiveness and well-assimilated musical foundations emerging in a highly personal way. Her name is Hilaria Kramer, and she is central to the closing evening of concerts organised by Associazione Culturale Musica Oggi with Milan’s municipal culture department at Teatro delle Erbe.
Entitled New Composition Between Jazz and Music Today, the series continued Musica Oggi’s stimulating initiatives, proposing new experiments with very young musicians: sixteen-year-old composer Jacopo Baboni and pianist Massimo Lunghi, who entrusted the nervous Nadia Sturlese with vocal interpretations of poems by Antonia Pozzi (1906–1938). These choices testify to research, a desire to step outside conventional lines, points of reference for further achievements.
In this brief series, in some ways opposing the festival avalanche sweeping noisily through Italy, Teatro delle Erbe’s attentive audience heard something different. In pure jazz, trumpeter Giampaolo Casati has matured splendidly, refined in his use of mutes, and pianist Andrea Pozza was supported by Luciano Milanese on bass and Tullio De Piscopo’s varied drum interjections.
After the established Liguori Ensemble comes twenty-year-old Hilaria Kramer, worth discovering because female trumpeters are uncommon. Why trumpet? A family affliction, she says: brother Alfredo plays drums, Luca piano. She too began on piano before taking up trumpet. She has studied Miles Davis, Chet Baker and their successors, seeking not to imitate them.
She fits into a polished ensemble: Claudio Fasoli on tenor and soprano saxophones, bassists Vaggi and Leveratto and the invaluable dialogue of highly intelligent drummer Gianni Cazzola.
All this to say that beyond the usual festivals, other opportunities await attentive listeners: for instance this young woman living in Switzerland, playing trumpet with impeccable technique and notable inspiration, modestly asking for time. Let us meet again in about ten years, she says.