Larry Nocella

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What struck me about Nocella was his, so to speak, “terribleness”; he seemed terrible to me for a combination of things that also made him, in a certain sense, threatening: his large stature, his hair and beard that seemed unkempt, his penetrating and not necessarily friendly gaze. However, the moment he started playing his saxophone, all that seemed to disappear. The sound of his tenor was one of the most beautiful sounds I had ever heard, and his pronunciation and sense of jazz were very convincing. „ Claudio Fasoli

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There are European musicians who ‘speak without accent that international language which is jazz’ (to paraphrase an expression by Geneva critic Demétre Joakimidis). Among these musicians, immersed from the outset in real time in the historical flow of jazz, Larry Nocella certainly stands out. „ Franco D'Andrea

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Jam Session, Capolinea, late 1970s. Larry was playing Coltrane in the late 1950s, but already with his own personal style, pronunciation and sound. I tried to keep up with Larry, following his exchanges, the harmonisations of the themes, the collectives, and at the end of the evening I asked him, smiling, if everyone in Milan played like that. That evening, I had met one of the best saxophonists I have ever known in the best possible way. „ Tino Tracanna