Fortuna Ensemble - Cigni Capre Galli E Grilli - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

If it ever seems that the art of the jazz piano trio has gone as far as anyone can reasonably take it - this given the legacy of great artists like Art Tatum, Bill Evans, Cecil Taylor, Ahmad Jamal and Keith Jarrett - the new recording by Italian master Enrico Pieranunzi is a triumphant assertion of the durability and creative vitality of the form. Working with two of the most musical players in the business, bassist Marc Johnson and drummer Joey Baron, Pieranunzi largely avoids the Broadway songbook in favour of original compositions coloured by his deep love and understanding of jazz but also his knowledge of classical and Baroque form, folk and other popular music.As a title, Hindsight may imply a looking back, but Pieranunzi recognises that that is the only way to move the music forward. The themes here may seem both naggingly familiar and utterly fresh. It's music of great generosity and openness, not a self-consciously magisterial statement by a great artist content to rest on his own reputation, but a contract of promise with the audience that jazz is far from running out of new things to say and new feelings to express.

The Aquila Altera ensemble keeps in mind the acquisitions of the most reliable musicological studies that claim that the gap between us and early music is so unbridgeable as to make it impossible to take into consideration any musical performance removing it from it's own historical context and time; but this does not prevent the ensemble from developing a particular musical approach whereby music from the learned, therefore written, tradition, is compared with music that owes it's existence to oral transmission. This research sets the two repertoires side by side, endeavoring to detect a possible relationship between them, not only in their musical aspects, but also in their texts. The repertoire that is presented here, which is entirely Italian, juxtaposes pieces drawn from manuscripts or printed collections from the thirteenth to sixteenth centuries with pieces (and performance practices) that stem from an oral tradition and from the use of musical instruments of the Italian tradition, in addition to the more common ones. These instruments have been reconstructed on the basis of the historical sources, and one of the most widespread and musically important is the bagpipe.

Fortuna Canta - Tres Gentil Cuer [COMPACT DISCS] date 01/23/2010