Tatiana Liakh - Part, Rachmaninoff & Ustvolskaya: Reflections - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

Telemann / Laccademia Giocosa / Schilli - Cons Trios & Sons [COMPACT DISCS] date 10/14/2014

I was born and raised in Naples, Italy in1962. There wasn't much music in my life growing up...I was very involved with soccer... still my father was a Glen Miller fan and my mother had studied classical piano early on. My brother was the first to pick-up an instrument (drums) and form a band. That's when I decided to do the same. I played a little piano, and I had a drummer friend...so we started looking for a bass player. We found a piano player with more experience... and they decided I should play bass. My first bass was a Hofner like Paul's with the early Beatles. We played by ear, the repertoire was Yes, Genesis, and various English Pop. After a going through a few bands and a few bass lessons, the music moved toward Funk, Earth Wind & Fire, The Average White Band, etc.. The bass by then was a Fender Jazz. After more lessons I started to mingle more and more with a jazz crowd . The fender jazz was traded for an Ibanez fretless, and I started playing standards. In 1982 at the age of 20 I moved with my family to Milano. There I decided to go back to school. I bought an upright bass and enrolled in the Scuola Civica di Sesto San Giovanni. I studied classical music for 3 years, and then joined my first professional jazz band. That band was the Italian Vocal Ensemble; 2 vocalist guitar bass and drums. We won third prize (out of a few hundred) in what was called Coppa del Jazz 1995 (a competition much like a soccer tournament). In the qualifying rounds we were performing on national radio and television, as well as in jazz festivals. Such good placement led to more concerts Pompei Jazz, Pescara Jazz, as well as to a recording contract. We then recorded Chiaroscuri for Red Records with Mike Melillo on piano as special guest. While recording the album I applied and received a scholarship from the Berklee College of Music and moved to Boston in 1986.      While at Berkle

This CD is the first to be devoted exclusively to the organ music of the Latvian composer, Peteris Vasks. With the exception of the InchTe DeumInch (recorded in St. Gertrude in Riga), all of the works were recorded on the magnificent organ of the cathedral in Riga. Here, over the course of the past twenty years, Talivaldis Deksnis, since 1984 one of the principal organists of this venerable house of worship, has performed all of Vasks's works for organ, many of them for the first time. The bird songs that Vasks so dearly loves and characteristic hymn-like choruses can be clearly heard on the organ as well, though they now sound more peaceful and distant; the threatening clusters of chords, which warn of a coming global catastrophe, also lose a bit of their terror. Besides original compositions for organ, this CD also includes two adaptations of works for string orchestra InchViatoreInch (which has also been recorded for WERGO by the Sinfonietta Riga and Normunds Sne; see WER 67052) and InchCanto di forzaInch, both dedicated to Talivaldis Deksnis, with whom Vasks has maintained a lifelong friendship. The two organ adaptations are surprisingly different in their effect from the original versions for string orchestra. In the ethereal registers of the organ, the InchhumanInch voices of the string instruments rise to weightless, immaterial heights. They flow out into realms of light. InchI am absolutely certain that music helps to keep the world in balance.Inch (Peteris Vasks)