Colleague who always brought a smile to your face, with his wit, his classy irony, and who gave you pearls of learned pop culture, Gianni Gherardi passed away yesterday at the age of 71. If you thought of the word jazz in the city, then the synonym was Gianni, a great lover of music in general, jazz in particular and sport, basketball – Fortitudo – above all. Born in the Apennines of Monzuno in Bologna, first a printer and then a journalist for Ansa (and jazz and surrounding collaborator for Repubblica), Gherardi took his first steps in the second half of the 1970s, in the pages of Play Sport and Musica, the young monthly of sport, music and entertainment at Guerin Sportivo, and continued his career at Ansa in Bologna, which just yesterday was the first to spread the news of his death. “Above all, he dealt with his two main passions: music, in particular jazz, and basketball, of which he had an encyclopaedic knowledge – we read in the agency launch –. But his culture and his irony led him to taking a curious interest in all aspects of the world around him. Passions and interests, which he had always cultivated, which had made him well known and appreciated in the city, also and above all for his human qualities”. Cultured, elegantly ‘cool’, as they say in Bologna – and I allow myself to write this with affection, because I always told him, his looks were simple and impeccable, his Ray Bans were legendary -, Gianni Gherardi had been hospitalized for some time Greater. His Facebook wall, where he was known to all as ‘Gigio’, was filled with lots of greetings yesterday, because… who didn’t know him? In 1992 he was also the founder of the Eikon photographic agency and Nicola Casamassima himself remembers him with a smile “for the many tagliatelle we ate together”. Because Gherardi was also a gourmet, always looking for the best Bolognese food. “Hello Gianni Gigio Gherardi. Here now we almost only hear bad music played. I hope you can stay immersed in the one you loved”, writes Marco Tarozzi. In a week the Bologna Jazz Festival begins, which was like his family, and who knows, something for the legendary Gianni Gherardi, who in the 80s also collaborated on our Carlino with the nom de plume Enrico Clappi (voice of the verb Eric Clapton) will resonate .
Benedetta Cucci
