And when the actors of a musical group manage to do this it means that they have understood that balance can easily get you used to looking for a new one with a simple change of perspective. This means grasping the possibility of variation and moving confidently in seemingly different worlds. In other words, it means creating art. 

And the skill, as in "Libre", the second episode of the work, is also that of casually proposing a journey into spiritual sound traditions capable of ranging from Gregorian chant to liturgical chorale complete with the surprising intervention of crystalline vocal calls donated by the choir " Lasallian White Voices” of Grugliasco (Turin).

Without stopping to contemplate meditations, the progression of the tracks shifts the balance once again by playing with the entirely Western and contemporary energy of "Elevation" capable of rewarding the trio's interplay between Spano's sparkling pianism, Maltana's powerful cavata and the Brancato's always attentive and active drumming.

The seven-odd minutes of the medley that titles the album are instead the climax that brings together the meaning of this recording. That is, where the subjective style of each protagonist and the sense of common research find the interpenetrating result of the perspectives at play.
Three solo moments that serve to explain the whole. In some ways brilliant.

And to make it better understood, right next to the aforementioned title, there is the slightly bluesy and slightly prog flow of "Alma Hundida" which at the end offers an extract of a heartfelt appeal with a touch of modernity and style political-social of Thomas Sankara (former president of Burkina Faso) recovered from his institutional intervention.

The surprises, however, are not over and the evocative drum of Francesco Brancato is the background to a short pearl of the tradition of the native North American Algonkin Blackfeet told from the heart and the light but at the same time profound voice of Michela Atzeni, actress, dubber and performer. All collected in "Shunka Manito", where Spano's touch is capable of summarizing the total expressiveness and of uniting, like Abdullah Ibrahim, the fundamental sound movements of African-American music tout-court.

And, without effects or fireworks, the trio takes us with the final "Esperanto" towards the light, perhaps that of knowledge and after the initial equal time "Sequence in Blue" had opened the doors of the essence of the work .
The story of this careful musical research also includes a careful work of sound care by Marti Jane Robertson, one of the most attentive and sensitive figures in the recording studios of these latitudes.

Also because on good cakes the icing cannot be missing.

Vittorio Albani

5 CARMENSITA CARINHOSA (Carmen, Bizet)
A little-known anecdote about the origins of Carmen tells of how Bizet, looking for musical inspiration for the composition of his masterpiece, came across the legend of the Asbein. This is the name assigned to a particular melody, the form of which was considered perfect in the musical tradition of Arabic-speaking countries. According to this very ancient story, passed down orally throughout the Middle East and North Africa, the melody of the Asbein was all that remained of the last memory of Lucifer at the moment of his expulsion from Paradise. During his very long fall from the empyrean vault to the earthly world, his tortured mind had gradually lost consciousness and memory of the music that was perpetually sung by the angels to glorify God and, at the moment of final impact, everything he had left in him. mind it had been a handful of notes. Poignant and beautiful in their harmonious sequence, Lucifer had wanted to maintain at least their memory and for this reason he had taught the melody to a group of wandering musicians, who had immediately included it in their repertoire, thus making it common knowledge and appreciated everywhere. brought their travels. Such is the expressive power of this short melody that Bizet took it as the main motif of his work, transforming it into a "theme of destiny", a leitmotif that returns during the story in the most significant moments.
The piece addressed here is instead a particularly captivating version of "L'Amour est un oiseau rebel", which opens Scene Five and introduces the main character of the opera. The text contains Carmen's entire life philosophy, a very simple philosophy: love conquers everything and is absolutely uncontrollable, so don't try to put it in a cage because it won't succeed and you will lose yourself.
For this piece too, Bizet looked for inspiration outside his great imagination. While looking for a folk dance group, he came across a Criolla contradanza that he immediately liked. The contradanza criolla, or habanera, was a derivation of the European contradanse of the 18th century, into which a rhythm of African origin was grafted and performed with percussion. This was probably the first attempt to unite the two great musical traditions, with the extraordinary result of paving the way for those new explorations that would be so influential on the development of twentieth-century music.
Gilson Silveira uses, in this very nice version, a 'simple' pandeiro, however drawing from it rhythms and colors as evocative as Carmen's feline gait through the streets of Seville. In my opinion this is one of the most successful and engaging songs of the project. The cohesion between the four musicians is perfect and the underlying expressive joy more than evident.

6 BLUE LUCY (Lucia di Lammermoor, Donizetti)
The scene of madness from the third act of Donizetti's Lucia di Lammermoor is a piece of musical and dramaturgical bravura, in which a coloratura soprano is needed, i.e. one capable of performing passages of vocal agility, cadences, trills, martellati etc. This assumption of musical form has often given rise to misunderstandings of the dramatic objectives of this piece by many singers of the past, who often focused more on the purely technical aspect than on the dramatic content. Thanks to the versions of some fundamental interpreters of the second half of the 20th century, first of all Maria Callas, the real colors of Lucia Ashton's madness, which exploded in her mind due to a series of unfortunate events and due to the duplicity of her brother Enrico, were finally returned to the story, thus re-establishing Donizetti's first expressive intentions. As this version of those present here also highlights, the quality of the improvisation/variation on even a minimal theme is strongly enhanced by knowledge of the text and the musical intentions of the original composer.

7 SALOMÉ'S JAZZ DANCE (Salomé, Strauss)
Richard Strauss had called his third opera (1905) "A comedy with lethal denouement", entrusting the main character of Salomé to an almost impossible figure of dramatic soprano who was also capable of dancing like a prima ballerina. The "comic" objective is therefore discernible in this ironic artistic stance, but the reality and, above all, the extreme drama of Oscar Wilde's original text hardly allow the public to grasp the composer's intention. Nonetheless, the first performance was a great success and the opera has remained in the repertoire until now. A few years earlier, Strauss had collaborated with Ernst von Wolzogen, who had written the libretto of Feuersnot, his second opera. The librettist was known for having created the Uberbrettl (Super-Cabaret), whose tones were extremely unscrupulous, especially on the erotic side. It is therefore not unlikely that Strauss was influenced by this experience in choosing the themes of his subsequent works, adapting to the taste for excess, characteristic of the beginning of the 20th century. Musically, the work has a very complex system of leitmotifs and orchestration, with the melodic structures practically buried in polyphony, even if the latter has many faces, including those of chromaticism and polytonality, for example in the famous dissonant chord of the final scene , about which much has been written in the annals of musicology. Precisely from this the "jazz dance" of this piece takes its inspiration, in which some brilliant choices can be noted, such as that of entrusting the hallucinated constant of the strings of the original score to the simple but very effective bell of one of the cymbals of Francesco's drums. However, a piece of collective skill, capable of fusing Strauss and Miles Davis, which prepares the finale of this CD well.

8 MIDNIGHT WALTZ (FOR CINDY) (Cinderella, Rossini)
Entrusting the closing of this album to the short waltz motif of Rossini's Cinderella seems rather witty to me and therefore in line with the brilliantly serious approach of the four musicians who created it. The rise from the modest fireplace framed in ash to the throne resplendent with glory and riches certainly augurs well for a project such as this. According to the memoirs of the librettist Jacopo Ferretti, Rossini set the story to music in just twenty-four days, sometimes working without leaving his bed, one of his favorite places for his creations. He was only twenty-five years old at the time of the first staging. The original song is sung by Angiolina, i.e. 'La Cenerentola', a young orphan who now acts as a servant to her two mischievous stepsisters Clorinda and Tisbe and to her vainglorious stepfather Don Magnifico. "Once there was a king, who got bored being alone..." sings the future princess, while preparing her morning coffee. And he proceeds to tell how this sovereign, in his search for a bride, scorns pomp and beauty and chooses innocence and goodness instead. One of the main qualities of the protagonist of this fairy tale in opera, apart from this kind of foresight, is believing in herself. This quality, with a little help from the philosopher Alidoro, tutor of Prince Ramiro, projects her to final happiness in the space of a night and a day. Why not take this happy ending, not as a point of arrival, but rather as an invitation (a promise?) to the continuation of this compelling exploration proposed by Melodrum.?